Composer Gregory Mertl is recipient of a 2007 Barlow Endowment commission for a piano concerto for Solungga Liu and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble. In 2017, Bridge Records released the concerto on a portrait album of his music. He has also received commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Big Ten Wind Ensembles, and has a Ph.D from the Eastman School of Music.
Recent work includes a full-scale work for solo piano, Pictures Without an Exhibition, and Passages for oboist Anna Hendrickson and guitarist Kenneth Meyer. Mertl’s latest release on Centaur Records (2024) features pianist Heather Lanners performing his complete solo piano music.
In 2024 he was a fellow at the Wurlitzer Foundation and was in Sweden in 2025 for the Visby International Composers Centre residency, where he was composing music for left-hand piano, commissioned by the Johnstone Fund for New Music for pianist Nicholas Ross. Also in 2025, he will be a composer-in-residence at the Chamber Music Festival in João Pessoa at the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil.
While at MacDowell, Mertl completely re-envisioned a piece for guitar and string quartet, expanding it out from the inside and clarifying many passages that weren't fully realized. Mertl is composing the work for long-time collaborator, guitarist Kenneth Meyer, but also envisions the work for the Brazilian guitarist Daniel Murray.
Portrait by Kyle Hobratcshk
