Kenneth Grigg: Pianist

Music is often said to be a universal language: it is more than language—it is speech and song, prose and poetry, recreating every nuance of the first instrument, the human voice. Stories, myths, lyrics, lullabies, ballads, epics, dirges, plaints, shrieks, howls, moans, purls, and celestial harmony all coexist here.

Kenneth Grigg's lifelong love of both words and music, seen and heard separately and together, is reflected in his performances; he uses refined and organic technical approaches as a vehicle to the most central, profound and absolute expression of a work of art.

Tremendous dynamic range, and every complex emotion given us by great composers, is represented in his playing; it is his goal to evoke all the colors of the voice, and all the potential of the world's sounds, through the piano.

Claude Debussy said, more than once, that "of course the piano must sound at all times as if it has no hammers."

Mr. Grigg's passion is not only to embody this dictum as a general rule but also, when called for, to give the piano the expressive range—a cornucopia of beautiful sound resembling among other things folk instruments—of great jazz sound and percussive attack of the highest quality as heard in the playing of Gina Bachauer, Bela Bartok, Teresa Carreno, Bill Evans, Marian McPartland, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Sergei Prokofiev, Moritz Rosenthal, Art Tatum, and Emil von Sauer.

Mr. Grigg's performances include:

house concerts
recitals
collaborations
lecture-recitals
lectures
concerti