Biography

Eclectic composer-pianist Erik Griswold fuses experimental, jazz and world music traditions to create works of striking originality. Specializing in prepared piano, percussion and toy instruments, he has created a musical universe all his own that is “sincere” (neural.it), “playful” (igloo magazine), “colourful and refreshingly unpretentious” (Paris Transatlantic).

A current recipient of the prestigious Australia Council Fellowship in Music, Griswold has received grants and awards from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, Brisbane City Council, Melbourne City Council, Asialink Foundation, Queensland Music Festival, Melbourne Jazz Fringe Festival, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the InterArts Consortium of the University of California. His work can be heard on Mode Records, Room:40, Listen/Hear Collective, Einstein Records, Accretions/Circumvention, Move, Clocked Out, and Innova.

His music has been performed at major festivals and venues throughout Australia, Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada, including: Carnegie Hall, Asia Pacific Festival (Wellington), Bang on a Can Festival (New York), Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, Chengdu Arts Centre, El Cruce (Madrid), Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series (Los Angeles), London Jazz Festival, Queensland Music Festival (Brisbane), Shanghai International Festival, Christianskirche (Hamburg), Sydney Opera House, Roulette and Tonic (New York).

Together with Vanessa Tomlinson, Griswold directs Clocked Out, which produces innovative concert series, events and tours. Clocked Out received the APRA-AMCOS “Award for Excellence by an Organisation” for their 2009-10 programs, as well as two “Green Room Awards” and the “Best Cabaret of the Melbourne Fringe Festival” 2000.

Composer website:  www.erikgriswold.org  Clocked Out Duo website: www.clockedout.org 

Featured Works

Time Crystals, for prepared piano and prepared vibraphone.

“Inspired by a 2012 article by Nobel-winning physicist Frank Wilczek about the idea of perpetually moving, multi-dimensional structures,Time Crystals by Brisbane’s Clocked Out Duo (Erik Griswold and Vanessa Tomlinson) transmutes the principles of hard science into felt structures of sound.   The duo explores ways to apply the ideas of perpetual motion, pattern and crystalline structures to musical forms, in the process creating music that is minimalist at heart but also rich and beautiful in execution.” – www.innova.mu

Featured in Playlist 3: Boundary-Crossing Waves (31/03/2015)

Pale yellow frontier, for prepared piano.

Pain Avoidance Machine, Erik Griswold’s first solo for Room40 in half a decade is an intimate set of miniatures. You are invited inside the piano, exposed to the instruments raw materiality. Griswold offers an invitation to explore the prepared piano’s sound world in detail that reveals an entirely new dimension. Mechanistic motifs and rhythms are layered one atop another to create fragile musical collages.

Featured in Spotify Waves – February 2017 (01/02/2017)