Composers: Mark Gresham

Go back and select a different composer.
Go to the Lux Nova Press home page.

Mark Gresham has been writing music since his early teens. While still a teenager, he studied conducting with Michael Palmer (then associate conductor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra). He was a member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus (under the direction of Robert Shaw) from 1973 to 1977.
   In the USA, Gresham's musical compositions have been performed by such groups as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Atlanta Symphony Brass Quintet, Cary and Dorothy Lewis of The Lanier Trio, Thamyris, the New York Concert Singers, the National Lutheran Choir, the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, the St. Cloud Symphony (MN), the Dubuque Youth Symphony, the Plymouth Music Series Chorus (MN), the Clemson University Orchestra, the Candler Choraliers, the Emory University Concert Choir, the Atlanta Young Singers of Callanwolde, and the Gwinnett Festival Singers. Outside the U.S., his music has been perfomed in such far-flung places as Djakarta, Indonesia, and by the 1000-voice Chœur la Grace of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.
   The National Lutheran Choir recorded Gresham's "Set Me As a Seal" on their 1994 CD, "Heritage, Vol. II: A New Song." Also in 1994, the Gwinnett Festival Singers premiered portions of his Te Deum at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.
   Between 1990 and 1996, Mark Gresham received three individual artist grants from the Georgia Council for the Arts. For the first, he wrote Imponderables for Laura Gordy and Peggy Benkeser of Thamyris; the second, his Sonata for Violoncello and Piano for Dorothy and Cary Lewis of The Lanier Trio; and finally, an orchestral work, The Embrace, written for the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, which they premiered in Februrary of 1996 and performed again in July 1996 for the Olympic Arts Festival of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia; both performances conducted by Jere Flint.
   During 2000 - 2001 season, Mark Gresham was Composer-in-Residence for a consortium of three Atlanta religious institutions: Central Presbyterian Church, First Congregational Church, and the Candler School of Theology. The residency was one of six in the southeastern U.S. sponsored by the American Composers Forum with funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
   Recent performances in 2006 inside the U.S. include the premiere of Rainbow Round a Crescent Moon by neoPhonia at Georgia State University; the premiere of a choral anthem, "Sing to the Lord a New Song" by the Choir of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston (Karl Henning, conductor); and Vagabond Drumming, Book I the Georgia State University Percussion Ensemble (Stuart Gerber, director). In July, The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Jere Flint conducting, premiered Music for a Summer Celebration in an outdoor concert at Wolf Creek Park in south Fulton County, which they reprised at Piedont Park in August, 2007.
   New compositions in progress include a work for mezzo-soprano Maya Hoover and pianist Lisa Leong, to be premiered March 10, 2008 at Spivey Hall (Morrow, Georgia).
   Mark Gresham's music is published by Lux Nova Press.
   In addition to being a composer and conductor, Mark Gresham is a writer and music journalist . He was the editor of Chorus! magazine from 1989 until 1995. His book of interviews, Choral Conversations, was published by Thomas House Publications in March of 1997. He has been a contributing writer for Creative Loafing, Atlanta since 2002, and his writing has appeared in other publications such as the American Music Center's online magazine NewMusicBox. In 2003 he won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in music journalism for his article Sounds Like Home, about fellow composer Jennifer Higdon.
   He has collaborated as co-author of An Introduction to the Gu-zheng,in four 4 volumes with gu-zheng master Angela Jui Lee (Angela Lee Propst). It is the first and only beginning method books for that Chinese stringed instrument written in English.
  •••