Richard Grudzinski

Richard is a composer, arranger, educator and keyboard player. He has also worked as a music preparation specialist—making scores and parts for various projects, including Broadway shows, films and live concert performances. He has worked in the music business for more than 50 years and toured the world as a performer, playing keyboards.

He was a professor in the Contemporary Writing & Production Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston Massachusetts where he has been employed for more than 32 years. During his residence at the college, he has written more than 60 works in various popular genres for live performance and the recording studio.

Richard was part of two Grammy Award nominated projects: In 2000, as copyist for a book on CD of the "Polar Express" in the Spoken Word category (music by Michael Moss)  and as recording engineer for Si Kahn's version of "Dump the Bosses", for the "Tribute to Utah Phillips" CD in 2009.

For the past 15 years or so, he has researched, studied, transcribed and written music in what is commonly called salsa—the popular music of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.  This music is (and has been for some time) well represented here in the United States.

He has recorded and released a CD of salsa music, and will be releasing a 2nd instructional CD for salsa dancers entitled “Master the Cha, cha, chá with MetaMovements”. This is a second in a series of CD’s for Salsa dancers (the first one being “Musicality with MetaMovements”). These CD’s help dancers with their timing. [MetaMovements is a Boston based dance company.]

His Salsa music CD, “Bailando en Aguas Oscuras” features students and faculty of the Berklee College of Music and was released in 2008. The Solar Latin Club in Cali, Colombia  voted it “Album of the Week” in 2010.

The New World Jazz Composers Octet recorded one of his Latin Jazz compositions, “Meta Mambo” in 2010. It’s the opening track on their CD “Transitions” and has been played live around the world. This is the first track you can hear on the home page.

In 2009, he arranged the song "Crazy Rhythm", for "The Midnight Strut"—a Broadway-style review. 

In 2008-2009 he transcribed 20 songs by folk singer Si Kahn for a musical entitled "Silver Spoon", written by Si and Amy Merrill. It had its Boston debut in 2011.

In 2007, he co-authored “Music Notation—Preparing Scores and Parts” with Matthew Nicholl (chair of Contemporary Writing & Production at the Berklee College of Music). the book is presently required reading for Berklee students in the CW&P major.

He is currently working on music in other Caribbean/South American styles, including Zouk and Brazilian music.