Grant Wenaus

Grant Wenaus

New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

Music Assistant Professor of Music and Music Education/ Director of Collaborative Piano

Email: grant.wenaus@nyu.edu

• Music and Performing Arts Professions

Grant Wenaus, born in Regina, Canada, joined the Program in Vocal Performance at the Steinhardt School at New York University in 2001. Since then, he has conducted NYU productions including The Magic Flute, L'enfant et les sortilèges, Dido and Aeneus, Orpheus in the Underworld, The Merry Widow, Ragtime, and The Light in the Piazza. Appointed as the Director of Collaborative Piano Program in 2010, several of his collaborative students have gone on to careers as Broadway pianists and conductors. Equally comfortable with classical and musical theatre repertoire, he was on faculty as a conductor for the University of Michigan Musical Theatre Program for three years (Of Thee I Sing, A Little Night Music and Anything Goes). In addition, he was the music director for the Interlochen Arts Camp and MPulse All-State Music Theatre Programs for seven summers.
Dr. Wenaus is on staff as a vocal coach and collaborative pianist for the Florence Voice Seminar, a summer opera program in Italy, alongside Benita Valente and Sally Wolf and the UpNorth Vocal Institute, an opera "boot-camp" in northern Michigan. During the summer of 2008 he served as a Principal Coach at the Glimmerglass Opera and performed several recitals with its Young American Artist program, and he will return this 2012 season for The Music Man with Elizabeth Furtral and Dwayne Croft.

Very dedicated to art song, he maintains and active recital performance schedule. With director, Micahel Rau, he conceived and performed in a seven-character staged version of Hugo Wolf's Italienisches Liederbuch and a similar project with 56 Brahms songs. Wenaus and Rai have also worked together to stage such works as Bach's Coffee Cantata and, most recently, Pauline Viardot's Cendrillon (with an new English version by Martha Collins, commissioned by NYU).

In New York, Dr. Wenaus is the primary pianist for the New Voices Collective, a concert series for Broadway composers and performers, where he works with such luminaries as John Kander, Jason Robert Brown, Andrew Lippa, Victoria Clark, Kate Baldwin, Rebecca Luker and Brian D'Arcy James.

As a pianist, his work is eclectic: he was the head of music for the Toledo Opera Outreach and Education program, played keyboards in the Broadway touring production of Grease!, and performed aboard the Italian Costa Riviera Cruise Liner. A highlight of his performing career was playing alongside Martin Katz at Carnegie Hall with such singers as Sylvia McNair and Sanford Sylvan in a tribute to Isaac Stern. He also worked for two summers as an opera repetiteur for Seiji Ozawa at the Tanglewood Music Festival, participating in the 50th Anniversary of the American Premiere production of Peter Grimes. The recipient of the Sir Ernest MacMillan Canadian National Endowment for Piano Accompanying, he also freelanced in Toronto for several years, working for the Canadian Opera Company, Tapestry New Opera Works, Opera Ontario and The University of Toronto. Dr. Wenaus is a former student of Martin Katz, Menahem Pressler and William Moore (who studied with famed teachers Rosina Lhevinne and Cecile Genhart).