Working on my next album, with a plan to release it over the next few months. Recorded in November, the editing is done and I’m now designing the album artwork. It is a mostly somber album – but then, we are living in somber times. The album will include: WE WILL NOT FORGET, for soprano saxophone and string orchestra. Originally composed for duduk and string orchestra, this music was composed during 2020, at a time when Hamas was once again firing missiles at Israel. I decided to record it in 2023, following Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel. It is a musical reminder of the long list of genoci ..read more

Sharing a link to a review of THE BRIDGE in Grego Applegate Edwards’s Classical-Modern Music Review.   Gapplegate  Music Review – THE BRIDGE The post THE BRIDGE appeared first on Stanley Grill Classical Music Composer ..read more

Happily sharing a link to an interview with Interlude’s Maureen Buja.  A conversation about my latest album, DIE ERSTE ELEGIE, and other recent musical activities.   Sighs and Cries – An Interview with Stanley Grill The post Sighs and Cries appeared first on Stanley Grill Classical Music Composer ..read more

Thrilled to share this review of THE BRIDGE by Take Effect magazine. Take Effect – Review of THE BRIDGE The post The Bridge – a review appeared first on Stanley Grill Classical Music Composer ..read more

Announcing the release of my latest album, DIE ERSTE ELEGIE, featuring soprano Lisa Rombach and conductor Marek Štilec leading the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice. The album begins with SYMPHONY OF SIGHS, an addition to my MUSIC FOR UKRAINE series, followed by a five movement symphonic setting of the first of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous Duino Elegies.   SYMPHONY OF SIGHS.  Composed in response to Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, a series of musical sighing gestures evolved into this single movement symphony.  Unable to change the course of events, instead I ..read more

1. To Brooklyn Bridge: the music begins looking down into the swirling dark waters beneath the bridge – then up through the cables of the bridge, like a giant harp, playing against the sunlit sky. 2. Ave Maria: Columbus crosses rough Atlantic seas on his first voyage home to Spain, his mind filled with visions of Cathay. 3. The Harbor Dawn: A chilly fog-filled dawn at the Bridge, fog horns and buoy bells call out through the fog. Then the sun. 4. Van Winkle: The modern world is evoked, as gun-grey macadam crosses the American continent. The sounds of a grind-organ elicit memories of childhood ..read more

As occasionally happens, yesterday in a conversation with a performing musician, I was told that she feared that learning music theory might stifle her musical creativity. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by that, as that thought seems somewhat commonplace. Nevertheless, whenever I hear it, I am taken aback. Music has a history that dates back to the very beginnings of our species and as it exists today, is the product of thousands upon thousands of years of accumulated experience and knowledge. That anyone who has made music their calling can willfully ignore all of that on the presumption ..read more

                Announcing the upcoming release of my latest album, THE BRIDGE, a fantasy for viola and orchestra inspired by Hart Crane’s epic poem of America. A premiere recording with the brilliant violist, Brett Deubner and the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice conducted by Marek Štilec. Available on streaming sites beginning on March 31, 2023. A small, blue edition of Hart Crane’s masterpiece had been living in my library for decades. The thought of doing something musically with it popped into mind now and then, but I never quite must ..read more

By nature, I’m a loner and a contemplative – not an activist. By practice, I’m a composer – and music has, since childhood, been a source of solace and a world more real to me than the world of people and all of their strange beliefs that strike me, by and large, as entirely unhinged from reality. I am not a religious person, but inclined to believe that most of the stories people tell themselves to explain the world are fantastical illusions. The view of mankind as a unique species somehow granted dominion over the earth, a view held by many of the world’s dominant religions, seems evidently ..read more

Two years of isolation at home allowed me the time and mental space to embark on several ambitious projects that, were it not for COVID, I would probably have never even considered doing. The first was taking out my edition of Hart Crane’s epic poem of America, The Bridge, and deciding to do something musically with it. With fifteen poems in the book, it was too long to set the texts, so instead, I wound up writing a symphonic fantasy for viola & orchestra, in fifteen movements, each a musical reflection of one of Hart Crane’s poems. As the world returns to normal (more or less), I’m worki ..read more