Vyacheslav Gryaznov is a concert pianist and arranger, author of over 40 concert arrangements. He has earned a reputation as one of the most outstanding young arrangers working today. In 2015, Gryaznov signed a publishing deal with Schott Music.
In 2022, Vyacheslav founded and assumed the role of Artistic Director of PianoFete, an annual piano duo festival held on Vashon Island (in the Seattle area, WA, USA). The festival focuses on showcasing world-renowned artists, expanding the repertoire for two pianos, and promoting original works, sometimes written especially for the event.
An ambitious recording project, with the participation of the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF) and conductor Wayne Marshall, is planned for the summer of 2025. The new album will feature Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Gryaznov’s Rhapsody in Black, based on themes from Porgy and Bess. This project is made possible by a new collaboration with the management agency Little Tribeca and the French record label Aparte.
During the 2020-2022 pandemic, Vyacheslav developed an idea and software implementation for a virtual orchestra platform called G-Phil, which allows musicians to practice and perform live instrumental concerts with unprecedented flexibility and quality of orchestral accompaniment. The project is in continuous development and several musicians have already used it for live performances around the world.
Gryaznov’s recording of Western Transcriptions, released in 2021 on the Master Performers label, joins his previous album Russian Transcriptions, released in 2018 on the Steinway & Sons label as part of the First Place Award at the New York Concert Artists Worldwide Audition (2016). Both volumes are available on all major streaming platforms.
Vyacheslav Gryaznov is a laureate of international competitions in Italy, Ukraine, Denmark, Georgia, Japan and Russia (including six First Prizes and Grand Prix) and is a frequent guest at international festivals. The pianist has toured in numerous countries in Europe, CIS, Africa, Japan, the USA and throughout Russia.
GPhil Virtual Orchestra by Vyacheslav Gryaznov
“Seems the pandemic of 2021 pushed many people to be even more creative than before. The whole idea of GPhil – an abbreviation of Gryaznov Philharmonic, as some of my friends liked to call me, knowing my love for instrumental concertos accompaniments – was born exactly around that time. First, as a simple and very limited tool for my own practice, but later it transformed into something quite different (and took a lot of time, which, at that period, I had).
I tried to find a way to unite an extremely high, almost unlimited technological level we are blessed to have nowadays, with some very specific needs of a classical musician’s everyday life. Turns out, those areas can and even should be combined to be actually beneficial for both fields!
GPhil is an app for practicing or performing live with a virtual orchestra. With the creation of the orchestral tracks using sample libraries and other software instruments, my goal is to create an exciting, engaging, musically making sense and flexible partner for musicians of all levels. In a bit old-school way, the app doesn’t use any AI tools (at least yet); it’s a handcrafted experience that hopefully can inspire and improve ensemble-wise skills to the next level. I try to make my virtual musicians breathe together, be as human and alive as possible, and just be fun to play with. In my own practice routine, the app added so much joy whenever I needed to learn a new piano concerto or refresh some dusty scores of the concertos I haven’t played for a while!
With a very simple and minimal setup, the other side effect of GPhil is an opportunity to bring the instrumental concerto genre to places where it was not possible or suitable before. Every living space, chamber hall, office, airport—anything with a piano and a set of speakers—can be transformed into a concert space. One of the GPhil app users who just performed the Second Rachmaninoff Concerto live for his friends and colleagues sent me this:
“I am writing to let you know that your work did something wonderful – it let a group of people be moved by the complete musical palette of Rachmaninoff in a time and place that otherwise would never have happened. You freed this music from the symphony hall and brought it into my office, and due to that, you made people genuinely happy today. In a way, you made the world a better place today. And isn’t that a wonderful thing about the power of music?”
I was deeply touched by this message and so inspired to move on with new energy! This is very true—I started to infuse my own piano recitals with the GPhil experience more and more, and I am very happy to see how much support this innovation gains and how refreshed the whole area of a standard recital programming can be someday.
The app is completely free to use, anyone can try it and make use of it. I hope that my performance of Shostakovich and Ravel piano concertos, as well as my own Rhapsody in Black, will show what GPhil is truly capable of.“
