Beverly Grigsby née Pinsky (b. 11 January 1928) is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 composer, musicologist and electronic/computer music pioneer.

Life

Beverly Pinsky was born in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, and studied music as a child. She moved to California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 with her family at the age of 13 and graduated from Fairfax High School. She entered the University of Southern California

University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

 to study pre-med, and also studied composition with Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...

 at the Southern California School of Music and the Arts. She graduated with Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in composition from California State University

California State University

The California State University is a public university system in the state of California. It is one of three public higher education systems in the state, the other two being the University of California system and the California Community College system. It is incorporated as The Trustees of the...

, Northridge

Northridge

Northridge is the name of some places in the United States of America:*Northridge, Los Angeles, California, a community in California's San Fernando Valley** California State University, Northridge** The Northridge earthquake of 1994...

, and a Doctorage of Musical Arts in composition from the University of Southern California. She later studied computer music generation at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

’s Center for Artificial Intelligence and at M.I.T. in 1975-1976.

After completing her studies, Grigsby took a position teaching music at California State University, Northridge, and also established and directed the Computer Music Studio there. In 1984 Grigsby composed the first computerized score for an opera. She retired from her teaching position in 1993, but continued to teach privately and work as a composer. Her music has been performed internationally.

Honors and awards

• The National Endowment for the Arts award
• The Arts International (Rockefeller) Grant
• CSUN Distinguished Professor Award
• CSU Chancellor’s Maxi Grant
• IAWM Outstanding Music Contribution Award
• Annual ASCAP awards
• Carnegie Mellon Fellow in Technology (1987)
• Getty Museum Research Scholar (1997–98)

Works

Grigsby has composed choral and chamber music, and also for film soundtracks and stage. She is noted for electroacoustic compositions. Selected works include:

• The Mask of Eleanor (1984) chamber opera with computer score
• Vision of St. Joan for soprano and computer (1987)
• Shakti II (1985) for soprano
• Trio for Violin, B-flat Clarinet and Piano (1994)
• Movements for Guitar (1982)
• Five Studies for Two Untransposed Hexachords for piano (1971)
• Spheres (1998) for Fairlight III Computer Music Instrument