Greg Kostraba has successfully combined a career as a radio professional and concert pianist. At the Fourth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, Greg’s performances were called “mesmerizing” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) and “boldly hewn” (Dallas Morning News), and garnered him semifinalist status. He has also been featured twice on Performance Today, performing with violinist Paul Woodiel in their arrangement of Bix Beiderbecke’s In a Mist and with the Toledo Symphony, Chelsea Tipton II conducting, in Kaintuck’ by William Grant Still.
Currently Content Director at WBAA Public Radio from Purdue University, Greg Kostraba previously served as Classical Music Director and Senior Radio Host at WGTE Public Media in Toledo, where he received the 2007 Ohio Public Broadcasting Award for “Radio Producer of the Year” for the monthly in-studio performance program Live From FM 91, and produced nationally-distributed specials celebrating the lives and music of composers William Grant Still and Samuel Adler. He has also worked at KRPS in Pittsburg, Kansas and at WGUC in Cincinnati.
Greg has performed throughout the Midwest, including appearances with orchestras in Ohio (Toledo, Lima, Perrysburg, and University of Toledo Symphonies) and Indiana (Lafayette and Purdue Symphonies) Orchestras, as well as the Lafayette Master Chorale and the Monroe County (MI) Community College Band. He has given solo piano and chamber music performances at Chicago’s Blackstone Library, the William Grant Still Festival, the New Harmony Music Festival and School, Oakland University, Bowling Green State University, Wabash College, St. Joseph’s College, Owens Community College, Adrian College, St. Roch (MI) Chamber Music Festival, Great Gallery of the Toledo Museum of Art, and three times on the Performing Arts Series at Firelands.
A performer of and advocate for chamber music, Greg founded and served as President & Artistic Director of the Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Toledo. He has also performed with the Sylvan Trio, Trio Quelque Chose, Tecumseh Trio and Trio Coronado, and can be heard on Kickshaw Records, Cambria Music, and the Rick Sowash Publishing Company.
Highlights of Greg’s 2018-2019 season include the release of a new album, Seasonal Breezes, with cellist Josh Aerie and the Sylvan Trio on the Rick Sowash Publishing Company label, the American premiere of Carnival 2 by Peter White with duo-pianist Owen Hartnett and the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra, performances of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the Columbus (IN) Symphony and Traveler by David Maslanka with the Purdue Wind Symphony in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, a program with Josh Aerie and violinist Jinty McTavish on the Tippecanoe Chamber Music Society series, and hosting – and performing on – live radio broadcasts of the New Harmony Music Festival and School, distributed nationwide.
Dr. Kostraba holds masters and doctoral degrees in piano performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a degree in international relations from American University in Washington, D. C. He has studied piano and chamber music with Dorothy Bolognini, Alan Mandel, Richard Morris, Sandra Rivers and Richard Fields, and participated in master classes with pianists Eugene Istomin, Michael Brown, and Ilya Friedberg as well as members of the La Salle, Audubon, and Tokyo String Quartets.
For more information visit Greg’s website, http://www.gregkostraba.wordpress.com/
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