Assistant Professor
Piano

gregory.oh@mun.ca
Room: MU-2024
864-7486
www.gregoryoh.com

Gregory Oh gained his notoriety as a “new music revolutionary” but his wandering of the genres has seen him appear in places from the Berlin C3 Fest at legendary techno club Berghain to the Beijing Modern Music Festival, and the Classical:NEXT opening night gala in Rotterdam to the Lincoln Centre in New York City. He is a big believer in celebrating the culture of today, whether by playing and conducting, collaborating on theatre productions or tackling big ideas and new media. His own projects include Halo Ballet™ – live music and dance within a networked game environment, and 21C Dido and Aeneas – a remix of Purcell’s opera that is “the kind of bracing, entertaining work that deserves a larger audience and a longer run” (NOW Magazine).

As a pianist, he was praised in the National Post for his “mesmerizing performance…intelligence and soul; imagination and insight. He revealed a visceral sense of tempo, excellent voicing, a wonderful pianistic palette, and a warm honest sound,” and lauded in the Toronto Star for “a superhuman interpretation of André Ristic’s keyboard-smashing avalanche of notes.” He has worked with many of our generation’s most distinguished composers, including Vinko Globokar, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, Frederic Rzewski, Unsuk Chin, Jörg Widmann, R. Murray Schafer, Kaija Saariaho, Toshio Hosokawa and Peter Eötvös.

He holds graduate degrees from the University of Toronto, where he completed his studies with Marietta Orlov as the top graduating pianist, and the University of Michigan, where he worked with Martin Katz.

A Dora-nominated music director and conductor, his credits include The Cave (Soulpepper/Luminato) Bearing (Signal Theatre/Luminato), While 100 Guitars Gently Weep (Bradyworks/Luminato), L’arbre de Borobodur (Evergreen Contemporary Gamelan), The Raven (University of Toronto), Melancholiac (Bad New Days/Summerworks), Urgent Voices (Continuum), Ride the Wind (Roscoe Mitchell/MTO), Crazy to Kill (Toronto Masque Theatre) and on the premieres of Cold Spring (2011) at New York’s EMPAC, Native Earth’s Giiwedin (2010) as well as XXX Live Nude Girls! (2009) in the Summerworks Festival. He was ensemble Music Director at San Diego Opera, and has also worked at the Canadian Opera Company, Soulpepper, Canadian Stage, Volcano Theatre, IFT Theatre, Theatre Direct, Florida State Opera, the University of Michigan Opera Program, Michigan Opera Works, Tapestry New Opera, InterArts Matrix, Autumn Leaf and Lyric Opera San Diego. He has held faculty positions at the Banff Centre for the Arts, both in Music and Sound, and Theatre Arts, where he worked with the Contemporary Opera and Song Training Program.

He is the artistic director of the highly acclaimed new music group Toca Loca with Simon Docking and Aiyun Huang, and “is clearly on his way, through performances, commissioning and programming, to making a lasting contribution to new music in this country.” (National Post/CAN). He served as the contemporary music curator at Toronto’s Music Gallery (2007-2014) and the artistic director of the Open Ears Festival (2012-2016). He frequently plays with many ensembles, including Continuum Contemporary Music, Arraymusic, Soundstreams, NEXUS, Contact Contemporary Music, New Music Concerts, Toronto New Music Works, The Art of Time, and NUMUS.