Collection: Griebling, Karen

Dr Karen Griebling is a member of a dynasty of composers comprising three generations (so far) that includes her parents, Stephen T (1932-2020) and Mary Ann Griebling (1936-2023), her sister, Margi Griebling-Haigh (b. 1060), and her niece, Gabrielle Haigh Nelson (b. 1992).

Griebling began composing when she was four-years-old under the guidance of her parents, and soon was admitted to the Preparatory Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.  A native of Akron, Ohio she spent four of her formative years in England when her family moved to Wimbledon in 1963. While there, she and her sister sang with London’s Kinderchoir. Upon returning to Akron in 1967, Griebling became immersed in the area’s musical opportunities, including singing with the Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus and participating in the Akron Scholastic Composers Contest, NFMC affiliate junior clubs, and various national competitions for young composers. Encouraged by her successes in the latter, and by her experiences at the Junior Conservatory Camp in Vermont, now The Waldon School, by the age of 12 she began to seriously consider herself a composer and, inspired by Paul Hindemith’s claim to be able to play the instruments he composed for, to study viola, bassoon, and voice, as well as piano.  

Upon her graduation from Harvey Firestone Senior High School in 1976, Griebling enrolled at the Eastman School of Music where she earned her BM in Composition (1980) and studied Viola under Francis Tursi. She also earned an MM from The University of Houston where she was violist in the Daniel Dror Graduate Quartet under the direction of Milton Katims while completing a degree in composition under Michael Horvit (1982). She earned her DMA in Composition under Donald Grantham at The University of Texas at Austin in 1986. Her Dissertation project was an operatic setting of Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1936 tragedy, The House of Bernarda Alba which saw its premier in 1994 by the University of Akron Opera Workshop under Alfred Anderson.

From 1987 to 2018 she taught violin, viola, composition, theory, orchestration, counterpoint, and world music, and was the founding conductor of the Hendrix College Chamber Orchestra at Hendrix College in Conway Arkansas. At the same time, she was tenured violist with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, and violist from 1999-2018 in the internationally acclaimed Cross Town Trio (saxophone, viola, piano.)  Whilst at Hendrix College she served as presenter of classical, jazz, new and world music for the college’s Special Events Series and founded the Conway Composers Guild.

Since 1984 her work has been profoundly influenced by travel and culture, beginning with her first opera when she immersed herself deeply in the Spanish culture of the 1930s. Drawn to New Mexico by curiosity about the inspiration for Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings, Griebling found new direction for her own compositional style in the 1990s. With its ‘big skies’, play of light and shadow, and unique cultural intersections, she is particularly inspired by the ruggedly dramatic and austere landscapes of Northern New Mexico. Later travels to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand in 2000, to Iceland, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Yorkshire whilst conducting research to generate the libretto for her third opera, Richard III, have similarly inspired Griebling.

In 2018 she took early retirement from Hendrix College where she now holds the rank of Professor emerita of Music, and from the Arkansas Symphony, to join her British husband, Robin ‘Rob’ Brown, in Manchester, UK. During their time there, Griebling taught at Strings Music School and Stalybridge Academy of Music, conducted the Leeds Haydn Players and the Abbney Orchestra, and freelanced extensively throughout the north of England with the Endymion Quartet and with a variety of orchestras and chamber ensembles. Shortly before returning the USA in 2019, she was soloist with the Amaretti Chamber Orchestra in the Handel-Barbirolli Viola Concerto, and with Royal Northern College of Music Tenor, Tim Kennedy, in Vaughan Williams’ Four Hymns.

Griebling’s other musical activities have included serving as principal violist with the Classical Music Festival and violist with the Kismartin String Quartet in Eisenstadt Austria, performance tours with the Cross Town Trio throughout Asia, Europe, and North America, and serving as principal violist with the Pinnacle Players, a conductorless chamber orchestra based in Little Rock. Before settling in Arkansas, Griebling was violist with the Albany (NY) Symphony Orchestra, the Berkshire Symphony, Assistant Principal Violist in the Corpus Christi Symphony and Laredo Philharmonic Orchestras, and violist with the Houston Ballet Orchestra and Texas Chamber Orchestra. She also performed as solo violist for the BBC/PBS documentary and performance of Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River.

In October 2019, Griebling returned to Ohio to look after her parents in their golden years. While there, she was an active member of the Cleveland Composers Guild and continued to freelance, performing frequently as a member of its viola section with the Akron Symphony, and teaching at Bowling Green State University (Firelands), Malone University, Richland Academy of the Arts, and Ohio Wesleyan University.

In 2024 she retired and returned to Conway AR where she resides with her husband and dogs and was delighted to have been commissioned by Hendrix College Physics Professor Ann Wright to compose a work for the April 8, 2024 Eclipse and to collaborate with Dance Ensemble Director and Choreographer Brigitte Rogers to present her ballet Aniketos moments before its totality, to perform a recital of her compositions as a guest artist at Hendrix College, and to play with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s viola section.

Griebling enjoys travel, cooking, art, poetry, history and culture, architecture, physics, yoga, Border Collies, hiking, trail riding and dressage, and riding pillion with her British husband on his classic Japanese motorcycles, and looks forward to enjoying more of these activities in retirement as inspiration for making music.

Griebling has registered over 200 of her original compositions with BMI in New York, including three operas (Bernarda Alba, The Roly Poly Pudding based on the Beatrix Potter children’s story, and Richard III: A Crown of Roses, A Crown of Thorns based on her own original research) six symphonies, eight string quartets, a viola concerto, several works for ballet including Sappho Dances, Aniketos, The Bug Ballet, and MIDAS, works for full and chamber orchestra, wind ensemble, film, mixed media including world folk instruments, theremin, and narrator, choral and chamber music, solo instruments and voices. She has released several commercial CDs as performer, conductor, and composer including her third opera, ‘Richard III: A Crown of Roses, A Crown of Thorns’ (Centaur), ‘Wildfire!’ (Vienna Modern Masters), ‘Fractal Heart’ (Centaur), ‘Music for the Cross Town Trio’ (Centaur), Hovhaness for Horn, Voice, and Strings (Centaur), and moduli mundi on ‘Apparitions II’ (Emeritus).