Born in the family of piano technicians, Anna Grig started her journey into music at an early age. At 6 years old Anna was accepted at the music school as a singer and pianist. After graduation, she continued her education at DK Viborgsky (St-Petersburg), where she was trained as a jazz singer and theorist. Aged 16 Anna entered Music teacher training college (St-Petersburg) where she received a qualification in music education. Although the title suggests an extremely vide variety of activities, Anna was mainly focused on theoretical disciplines and the history of music.
Throughout her school career (1999-2009) Anna was a leading singer and stage performer specialising in pop music. There hardly have been any concerts where she was not involved. In the later years of school, Anna was asked to take part in many competitions and was always placed. Unfortunately, due to some misunderstandings, Anna has had to pause her singing career for several months after leaving school. Nevertheless, attending college meant that she started singing again as a solo and choir performer.
In 2006 Anna begun studying composition with Sofia Levkovskaya (composer at the St-Petersburg Conservatory), parallel with that she started attending lectures at the Conservatory where she studied counterpoint, harmony, musicology and conducting. In 2009 Anna started taking composition consultations with Sergei Slonimsky.
In 2013 she came for a Summer School at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where, thanks to the guidance of Gordon McPherson and Rory Boyle, she made the decision to make a much-loved hobby into a life-long ambition of becoming “a good enough composer”. Anna accepted a place at the Conservatoire later that year. The composers Conservatoire career was full of premieres, experiments and deeper explorations into her compositional voice. Some of the highlights of that period include electroacoustic works such as “the whisperer”, and underscore to “the mid summer’s dream”, ensemble piece “decent into madness” and various pieces for solo instruments as well as a few short film scores. Anna has graduated the Conservatoire in 2018 and is currently working as a freelance composer in Hamburg, Germany.
Anna talks about herself:
"I grew up in music, surrounded by pianos, exceptionally talented people and of course opportunities to harm myself. I come from a dynasty of piano technicians, so one, two or five pianos was a staple in the house and ever since I know myself I tried to make music. When I was 2 years old an unfortunately fortunate accident occurred: during one of my improvisation sessions, which would often sound akin to Avant Garde or modernist pieces, I decided that a piano close to the wall did not make any sense. After all, how would I run the metal ruler against the ribs? A few minutes later my mother rushed into the room following a wall-shaking crush of a toppled over piano only to find me happily splayed under the keyboard, laughing.
Now it has been over 20 years since that incident. My desire to be musically connected quickly progressed from tinkering on the piano and singing on the underground while the train roars its way through the tunnel (no one can hear me, right?) to a music school, concerts big and small, college, conservatoire and finally the passion turned into a profession.
Music is a language with many voices and dialects, meanings and emotions, but one thing is certain: music speaks to the deepest depths of a human being and tells a story in a way that words simply cannot. This is why I compose and this is why I am committed to telling stories. It is my mission to give your story a voice like no other and help it have a profound effect on the audience.
As years have past and gone and I have had numerous opportunities to work with fantastic musicians, theatre directors and filmmakers I have never stopped asking myself: “What would I be doing now if not for that faithful accident?”. And the answer is simple: I don’t know. But there is one thing I am certain of- I will always love telling stories with the universal language of music!”