Bio
Composer Brian Wilbur Grundstrom is equally accustomed to writing for orchestra, opera, film, theater, chorus, piano and chamber ensembles. His voice includes a strong affinity for long melodic lines, distinctive tonal harmonic vocabulary, engaging rhythms, skillfully executed counterpoint, and dramatic imagery. Audiences take to his compositions immediately, finding in his melodies traces of Copland and Puccini.
Classically trained in piano from Gettysburg College, he continued composition and orchestration studies with John David Earnest. His awards include Outstanding Emerging Artist in the 2013 DC Mayor’s Arts Awards, and many artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
His opera for Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls received a full workshop performance on November 20, 2022, with selections performed and recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, Rome Symphony Orchestra (Rome GA) and National Symphony orchestra in Brasilia, Brazil.
Conducted by Maestro Erik Ochsner, Grundstrom’s CD, An Orchestral Journey was released in 2016 by Parma Recordings under the Navona Records label with distribution by Naxos.
