Grant Colburn, Composer, Biography

The Biography of Grant Colburn

The composer Grant Colburn was born in Wisconsin in 1966. Always one to search for the obscure and out of the ordinary in music, the late 70's found him taking an interest in the harpsichord after hearing a recording by Igor Kipnis. Shortly after he attended two summers of harpsichord workshop studying with Igor Kipnis at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival. During this time he began writing his earliest compositions in a period style.

Since this time Grant Colburn has written and self published four books of period music. The first called A First Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord or Organ contains his earliest pieces in the baroque style. The second completed book, Six Setts of Lessons for the Harpsichord along with the third book recently completed titled Six Easy Lessons for the Harpsichord are both highly influenced by the keyboard music of Handel's English Contempories. A fourth book is also in print called A Renaissance Miscellany, which in addition to keyboard music also has instrumental music, songs, and rounds ranging in stylistically in time from the early to later 16th century.

Two other books are also in the works. The first will be harpsichord music inspired by the slightly earlier generation of post restoration English composers, and the other a new collection of Renaissance music. Recently Colburn was the author of a feature length article in the summer 2007 issue of Early Music America Magazine on period composition and appeared at this year's Boston Early Music Festival playing his own compositions. He is also active as a member of Vox Saeculorum and a member of the Delian Society. Currently Grant Colburn lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin where in addition to composing, he is an organist, piano teacher, rock musician, and freelance pianist and accompanist.

September, 2005