Gregg Wager

Gregg Wager (born September 16, 1958 in Adrian, Michigan) is an American composer, pianist, and music critic. He studied composition at the University of Southern California and the California Institute of the Arts. His teachers included Morton Subotnick and Morten Lauridsen. His piano teachers included Yuriy Oliynyk, Doris Stevenson, and Chester Swiatkowski. In 1996, he earned a Ph.D. in musicology at the Free University Berlin.[1]

As a critic, he specializes in contemporary classical music and postmodern music. From 1985 to 1991, he contributed regularly to the Los Angeles Times. In a 2001 article for the New York Times, "Going the Way of the Victrola," Wager advocated for the P2P community and the fall of the importance of the recording studio.[2]

Wager's musical influences vary from traditional forms of American and classical music to minimalism, jazz, rock music, and even serialism. He especially is influenced by Karlheinz Stockhausen and the relationships between pitch and tempo, timbre and rhythm.

After serving as an adjunct professor at Purchase College and for a year as a guest lecturer at the Korea National University of Arts, in 2008 he enrolled in law school after not finding more permanent teaching positions.[3] He earned a JD at McGeorge School of Law in 2014.[4]