(2023) New York State Council on the Arts - Artist Grant
Grant Winner. Support for the commissioning of a new work for String Quartet in 2023. NYSCA supports the creation of new work by New York State artists through artist-initiated projects across a wide range of areas.
(2022) The President's Own United States Marine Band Call for Scores Competition
Semi-finalist | Sfidare for String Orchestra
(2022) Australia Council for the Arts - Arts Projects for Individuals Grant
Highly selective grant. This program funds a range of activities that deliver benefits to the arts sector and wider public, including national and international audiences. Grants are available from $10,000 to $50,000. Supported activities must last no longer than two years from the proposed start date.
(2022) Red Jasper Award in Music Composition
Runner-up/Finalist | String Quartet No.2 “Fede”
One of 6 finalists selected from over 400 applications. The Red Jasper Award in Musical Composition seeks to recognize and promote outstanding musical works by recent composers
June in Buffalo - University at Buffalo (June 2023)
Buffalo, New York, USA
Presented by the UB Department of Music and The Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music, June in Buffalo, is a festival and conference dedicated to contemporary composers. June in Buffalo offers an intensive schedule of seminars, lectures, workshops, professional presentations, participant forums and open rehearsals, as well as afternoon and evening concerts open to the general public and critics. Each of the invited composers will have one of his/her pieces performed during the festival. Evening performances feature faculty composers, resident ensembles and soloists renowned internationally as interpreters of contemporary music.
Piano Trio No.1 World Premiere
I wasn’t able to attend the premiere of my first piano trio due to an enormous gap in geography, but some audience members took it upon themselves to write to me and let me know about their experience at the concert. One such individual was Bob Leschen who wrote this short article of what transpired that evening!
Thank you, Bob!
Australian composer Micheal Grebla’s new Piano Trio No. 1 “In Search of Peace,” was given its Australian premiere on Saturday 11th December, 2021 in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick at the Tempo Rubato theatre. Before a sell-out crowd of over one hundred, this attractive music was greeted with sustained applause and enthusiastic hooting.
Piano Trio No. 1 “In Search of Peace” sat comfortably within a well selected program consisting of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op 8, Arvo Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio, and Robert Schumann’s Piano Trio No. 2, Op 80. Melbourne Chamber Players, Natalia Harvey, violin, Anna Pokorny, cello, and Aidan Boase, piano, played the program with enthusiastic commitment and skill which appealed greatly to the appreciative audience. Interestingly like Michael, Anna and Aidan, and your reporter, all originally came from Western Australia. I am indebted to Aidan for offering the following comments on the content of Michael’s composition and Georgina for the photo and describing Michael’s music as “monumentally beautiful”.
Michael Grebla’s first piano trio is a powerful emotional journey. After a sweet and vulnerable opening from muted strings, the piano enters with the main theme of this work, a beautiful, searching chord progression – very soft and deeply resonant. The work returns to this theme twice more later, amidst episodes of immensely varied character and energy. Michael builds the intensity slowly at first, then there are sweeping lyrical passages, wild gypsy-like sections, frantic and breathless passages. The music dissolves back into stillness and tranquillity for the opening theme again. The next section has a kind of inevitable momentum, music that picks you up and sweeps you along, and soon everything is fiery and intense, and this time it doesn’t dissolve back into the opening theme, but crescendos into it for the final hearing, thunderous and resolute with massive piano chords and soaring string harmonics. It’s a triumphant return, but the last few bars seem to leave us with a question – how long will the peace last?
I’m a huge fan of Michael’s music and feel so happy to have been able to perform some of it at last. We cannot thank Michael enough for writing this wonderful piece of music, and can’t wait to perform it again and record it!
Bob Leschen
Indiana State University 55th Annual Contemporary Music Festival (October 2021)
Terre Haute, Indiana USA
An annual new music festival at Indiana State University College of Arts and Science. The week long festival presented a series of concerts. I participated as a featured guest and winner of the “Music Now Contest” with the rehearsal and performance of the winning work A Curious Misadventure in the Music Now Recital and also spoke and participated in a series of lectures and panel discussions.
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(2021) Indiana State University - Music Now Contest
Winner | A Curious Misadventure. To be featured in Indiana State University’s Contemporary Music Festival 2021.
(2021) New York City Artist Corps Grant
Grant Winner | Commission to write a new work for solo violin with an artist talk about the work in progress to presented in New York City in Fall of 2021 as part of the New York City Artist Corp by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the New York City Foundation for the Arts. .
