"Griffiths really has developed his own style

Alan Griffiths was born in Blantyre, Malawi in 1967 and moved to Christchurch, New Zealand six years later. He studied piano and clarinet from age 9 before winning a scholarship at age 10 as boy soprano with the Christchurch Cathedral Choir.

From age 13 he had a deep urge to write music, and began composing his own art music. At age 19, after a brief stint in the New Zealand Army Band as a keyboard player, Alan moved to Australia, where he sought private study with professional composers.

Alan studied with the late Michael Easton, then with the late Dr Allan Zavod. Under Zavod’s guidance Alan’s music became freer and more widely expressive.

He went on to score for dozens of plays, corporates, short film and two feature films and produced the well received Autogeddon for the 2006 Melbourne Fringe.

The repertoire for his 2016 Introspection, 2018 Rare View and current Land No More? albums were mostly composed over a period of 27 years in between music scoring work.  ANZCA Music Examinations chose 15 of Alan’s solo piano pieces in total for inclusion in their 2018 – 2024 pianoforte syllabus and graded as either Grade 8, Associate Diploma or Licentiate. ANZCA conducts music examinations in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei. These pieces are published on this website.

Award winning Ukrainian/Australian pianist Evgeny Ukhanov recorded & performed Introspection’s SOLD OUT World Premiere at the 2016 Stuart & Sons Spring Concert Series, Yass, NSW, on one of only 11 4-pedal 102-key Stuart Concert Grand Pianos.

Rare View was recorded by international multi-award recipient and virtuoso Nicholas Young, Polish concert violinist Dominik Przywara and Sydney concert cellist George Yang at Underwood Studios, Sydney. It is the world’s first studio album recorded with SONY’s new C100 Hi-Definition microphones.

Rare View’s 2018 World Premiere was sponsored, filmed and recorded by SONY, Stuart & Sons and was part of Beleura House’s 2018 subscription concert series in their Tallis Pavilion. The  concert was also the world premiere of the world’s largest piano, a 108-key, 4-pedal Stuart & Sons Concert Grand Piano, finished just in time for this SOLD OUT concert, receiving world wide attention.

The live world premiere recording is a world first with the SONY C100 microphones and it was recorded at 96Khz. The album is available as a download on this website.

In honour of Wayne Stuart’s ground breaking piano designs, Nicholas Young took a little heard Bach Gigue, originally for church organ, and arranged it for the entire 108-key range. This recording is included in the Rare View album available on this site.

Japan’s renown film maker Kenshin Nawa filmed a 5 minute SONY Stories about the 108-key, SONY’s new microphones, the Bach and Alan’s concert. This featured on the SONY’s huge display at the 2019 CES Las Vegas.

The live recording of the 2nd track of Rare View, Nocturne, was released as a single by Elkwood/SONY label through Native DSD.

ANZCA Music Examinations sponsored Alan’s SOLD OUT 2019 Victoria Rare View premiere at Tempo Rubato. It featured Nicholas, Melbourne Opera Orchestra Concertmaster Ben Spiers and multi-award winning Australian cellist Gemma Kneale. This was the 4th premiere on a Stuart piano. The concert also featured Introspection repertoire chosen by ANZCA.

Alan’s self-produced albums have received 5 glowing international reviews from some of the world’s top classical piano critics and he plans more albums.

International opera star Paul Whelan recorded Alan’s latest song-cycle ‘Such a Fine, Sunny Day’, for ‘Land No More?’ at The Piano Centre for Arts in Christchurch New Zealand with Nicholas and NZ award winning pianist Anna Maksymova.

The concert and recording was sponsored by world leading audio/tech company TM Stagetec Systems. They couriered over their next generation recording NEXUS equipment from Switzerland and flew a technician from Sydney to help set it up. Filmed by Australia’s James Carrett, their commissioned promo of the recording project is currently being promoted in their 37 offices worldwide.

Alan flew over Sydney recording producer Craig Field to record this project.

ANZCA Music Examinations also sponsored the concert.

Alan’s latest 2 piano pieces chosen by ANZCA received their World Premiere by University of Canterbury’s School of Music top honours student in performance piano Megoe Chen and Nicholas. Their recordings are also slated to  appear on Land No More?

New Zealand’s concert violinist Rose Light played the NZ Premiere of Etude for Violin and Piano from Alan’s 2nd album Rare View with Nicholas. Rose’s chamber ensemble won 1st Prize at the 2019 Queensland International Chamber Music Competition (Under 18s). Nicholas’s chamber Ensemble Francaix won the 1st Prize of the same competition. So they both appeared together on stage.

In 2023 Alan produced the well attended Paul Whelan ‘Such A Fine, Sunny Day’ Australian Premiere, at St Paul’s Cathedral, to 2 standing ovations. Australia’s multi-award winning cellist Gemma Kneale and violinist Zoe Freisberg played some of Alan’s trios in this concert.

Megoe flew over from Christchurch to play the dramatic piano accompaniment with Nicholas in the song-cycle and also 2 Australian premiere’s of Alan’s piano pieces.