Applauded in London by the Sunday Times for performances of “great panache,” pianist Gregory Martin’s playing has been called “filled with imagination, fire, and lyricism…a virtuoso performance” and praised for its “mature and subtle understanding, all the while handling formidable technical difficulties with ease and fluency.” He has been featured throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan as both a soloist and chamber musician, as well as being a top prize-winner in various international competitions. Martin has debuted new works by composers such as Emile Naoumoff and John Traill, as well as premiering unpublished compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi, for whose centenary (2001) he organized a series of recitals and brought the composer’s son to lecture. Collaboration with Håkan Hagegård on a staged version of Dominick Argento’s song cycle “The Andrée Expedition” led to an invitation from the composer to perform at the Schubert Club of St. Paul, which commissioned the work. The past season has included solo performances at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall); chamber concerts with the Garth Newel Quartet (Virginia); collaborations with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Dresden Staatskapelle; and various other return recital, chamber, and concerto engagements across the United States and Europe.

 

In addition to performing, Martin has lectured at such institutions as the University of Berlin (Germany), the Grieg Academy (Norway), and Oxford University (United Kingdom). His presentation on the Grieg Ballade during centenary festivities (2007) at the composer’s home in Bergen, Norway was immediately hailed as the “most important work on Grieg in years,” and lead to recital engagements and lectures in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Holland, and the United States; a full-length study is forthcoming. Other research interests include the German Romantics, the composers of the 20th-century English Renaissance, and Inkling studies. Recent publications are an article on Vaughan Williams’s opera ‘Riders to the Sea’ and a chapter contribution to “Music in middle-earth”, a volume on music in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien; upcoming articles include essays on Schumann and Brahms. Dr. Martin has been awarded grants from the Finzi Trust and the International Edvard Grieg Society, and last year was named Head of Academics at the new Cornish-American Song Institute (Falmouth, UK).

 

Martin holds DM and MM degrees in piano performance from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a BM from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (Valedictorian); additional post-graduate work was conducted at the University of Oxford (Worcester College), and focused on the intersection of language, music, and national identity in 20th-century England. Primary teachers have included Edmund Battersby, William Black, Leonard Hokanson, and Karen Shaw, with important encouragement from Robert Saxton. In Fall 2011, he joined the University of Indianapolis as an adjunct piano instructor, and DePauw University as a staff accompanist. He is also active as a composer, and is married to clarinetist Christina Martin, with whom he regularly appears in concert.