Instructor Bio

Karen Griebling

Part-Time Instructor of Performing Arts – Music History

Education

• B.M., Eastman School of Music, The University of Rochester
• M.M., The University of Houston
• D.M.A., The University of Texas, Austin

About

Dr Karen Griebling holds degrees in music from the Eastman School of Music, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at Austin. She taught violin, viola, composition, theory, world music, women in music, politics in music, and was the founding conductor of the Hendrix College Chamber Orchestra at Hendrix College while concurrently performing as a tenured violist with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and violist in the internationally acclaimed Cross Town Trio (saxophone, viola, piano).

After a brief sojourn in the U.K. where she performed as viola soloist with the Amaretti Chamber Orchestra and as violinist and violist with orchestras and chamber ensembles and conducted orchestras throughout Manchester, Leeds, and Yorkshire, she returned to her native Ohio where she now teaches at Malone and Ohio Wesleyan Universities and Richland Academy of the Arts and performs as violist with the Akron Symphony Orchestra and Andiamo musici.

Griebling is an active member of the Cleveland Composers Guild. Her compositions are regularly featured on WCLV. Recent performances have included Burning River Baroque Ensemble and the SheScores Music Festival. She has registered over 100 of her compositions with BMI, including three operas (Bernarda Alba, Roly Poly Pudding, and Richard III) six symphonies, ballet scores (Sappho Dances, MIDAS, The Bug Ballet, and Aniketos) and full and chamber orchestra, wind ensemble, mixed media including world folk instruments, theremin, and narrator, choral works, chamber, solo instrumental and vocal works. She has released six commercial CDs as performer, conductor, and composer including 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).

Griebling has served as principal violist with the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt Austria and violist with its Kismartin String Quartet. She has toured as violist with the Cross Town Trio throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. She also served 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.’