Search - Gregory Partain :: Beethoven: Piano Sonata No.23 "Appassionata"; Barnes, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Scarlatti

In his 20 years on the concert stage, Gregory Partain has appeared as recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist throughout the United States, and has performed overseas in Russia, Poland, Greece, Guatemala and Costa Rica. Recent concerto appearances include performances with the orchestras of Athens, Greece and Yaroslavl, Russia. Prior to these engagements, Partain appeared with the Seattle Symphony, Eugene Oregon Symphony, and Sunriver and Peter Britt summer festivals, performing concerti by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Saens, Bartok, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and Gorecki. Recent projects include a three-evening concert-lecture series on the last five piano sonatas of Beethoven and the release of his debut solo album (Volume I) containing works by William Byrd, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and Ravel. Partain turned serious interest to composition in 1998 with the premier of Two Songs for Harp and Soprano on Poems of William Butler Yeats and his choral piece Lux aeterna received its first performance the following year. In 2003 he premiered Come to the Garden in Spring: Seven Songs of Earthly and Spiritual Love, a song cycle for soprano and piano on the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, the 13th-century Islamic mystic. As the Kentucky Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer for 2005, he composed a nine-movement concert Requiem for a cappella choir, based on traditional Latin texts. Partain received his B.M. in piano performance at the University of Washington, and M.M. and D.M.A degrees from The University of Texas at Austin as a Javits Fellowship recipient. A frequent adjudicator and master class teacher, Partain is Professor of Music and Fine Arts Division Chair at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he holds a Bingham Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching.