Seth Grosshandler received his B.A. in Music from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1979, with a focus on music composition.  His thesis composition - a Quintet for Piano and Winds – won the Reed College Class of ’21 Award, given for “creative work of notable character, involving an unusual degree of initiative and spontaneity.”  During law school and throughout his brief (35-year) gig as a lawyer, he performed as a pianist in several chamber music concerts in the New York City and Chicago areas.  Since retiring as a lawyer in mid-2018, he has focused again on composition, while continuing to perform his own and others’ works.  He attended composition classes at the Juilliard School Evening Division in 2018-19 and then the European American Musical Alliance Summer Music Institute in Paris, France during the summer of 2019. He is currently a private composition student of Dr. Philip Lasser, a harmony student of Dr. Mark Shapiro and a counterpoint student – through the European American Musical Alliance Academy – of Dr. Benjamin Boyle. He has received two commissions for orchestral pieces;  the first, from the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca, New York, will be premiered in June, 2022; and the second, from the Symphony of the Mountains in Kingsport, Tennessee, will open a concert with Bela Fleck in September, 2022. His Sonata for Violin and Piano was premiered on a livestream by Suite Française (at suitefrancaise.org) in December, 2020, and will be played in a series in Livingston, New York of Jazz and Classics for Change in the fall of 2022.

Seth is also a visual artist, focusing on printmaking.  He has been a student of Wendy Shalen and Bill Behnken at the Art Students League and of Elaine Brieger at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.  He uses discarded materials such as packing materials and old record albums to create plates from which he creates monoprints (often using chine collé) that either stand on their own or are further manipulated in collages or elaborated with hand painting.  Several of his monoprints were selected to be shown and sold at the Art Students League booth at the Affordable Art Fair in New York City in March, 2022.