Gregory Mertl

Who is Gregory Mertl?

'“A talent the ear wants to follow wherever it goes”, Gregory Mertl has garnered commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Phoenix Symphony, the Wind Ensembles of the Big Ten Universities, the Ostrava Oboe Festival, Czech Republic, Kenneth Meyer and the Hanson Institute, the University of Oregon, CSTMA, and the Barlow Endowment for a piano concerto for pianist Solungga Liu and the University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble, Craig Kirchhoff, conductor, which was premiered in November, 2011 and will be released by Innova Records in 2014.

In 2010, he presented work on a concert/lecture tour in Romania and Hungary and as a guest composer at KOFOMI where he had performances by the Austrian contemporary music ensemble "Die Reihe". Previously his music has reached audiences in France, at the Festival du Moulin d’Andé and the France Musique radio station, Belgium, where he placed third at the Harelbeke International Wind Ensemble Composition Competition, and the Czech Republic, where he was featured composer of the Ostrava Oboe Festival in both 2005 and 2009. In Asia, the Tainan Women’s College of Arts and Technology hosted a two-day conference featuring Mertl’s music in May 2005 and lectures and performances followed at several other Taiwanese universities. His music has also been performed in China, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. In the US, it has been heard widely. In 2007, Open Gate, an ensemble he co-founded, performed an entire evening of his chamber music on a tour that culminated at Weill Recital Hall in New York City.