Instrument: Bass
Originally from: Anoka, MN
Now reside in: Houston, TX
Age: Old enough to not want to say
Birthday: April 30
How did you get started? An acquaintance of my father had played bass in the Minneapolis Symphony: a job he quit to start the string program in our school district. When I was twelve it came time for me to decide what instrument I was going to play, and this gentleman insisted that I was a bass player, offering to give me free lessons to sweeten the deal. Free lessons – what more can I say.
What do you do when you’re not playing with ROCO? I also play with the HGO, am assistant librarian for the Houston Symphony, teach privately, and do a fair amount of freelancing. On my down time I spend quite a bit of time at or in swimming pools with my daughter, go to the gym, and practice (of course). In the summers my wife and I are lucky enough to play in music festival in Jackson, WY, and Door County, WI. I really enjoy hiking in the Grand Tetons and am trying to get my daughter interested in it too (the picture below is of us on the trail). Aside from that I enjoy hunting down fine (but affordable) bottles of wine, meditating, and have recently picked up a nice pencil set and began to sketch – mainly portraits of people.
What are you listening to on your iPod? I don’t own one, but have been listening to quite a number of jazz songs this summer in the car.
What did you do this summer? I once again taught at The American Festival for the Arts, here in Houston, from mid-June through the first week of July. I then got in my van and drove west for three days, arriving in Jackson, Wyoming for the Grand Teton Music Festival, which my wife and I have been participating in for the past twelve years. The weather was perfect this year – sorry to rub it in for those stuck in town. After two weeks of the mountains, my wife, my daughter and I got back in the van and headed east, eventually ending up in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, home of the Peninsula Music Festival: a three week festival we participate in every summer. As I write this I am looking out of our apartment window onto the blue Lake Michigan, glad that we have two more weeks in Wisconsin before the inevitable drive back to Houston. On our way here we drove through the Badlands National Park in South Dakota – an eerie, arid, but beautiful landscape that makes you think you must have temporarily left this planet.
Personal info: Married to Joan DerHovsepian, one five-year-old daughter, no pets.
Question you’re asked most often: Every bass player’s most often asked question: “Don’t you wish you played the flute?” My patent response: “Don’t you wish you were the first person to think of that one?”
Bio: Erik Gronfor spent two years of college thinking that becoming an electrical engineer was a good idea before transferring to the Curtis Institute of Music to study bass with Roger Scott. Upon graduating he took a job as the Principal Bassist of the Albany Symphony Orchestra: a job that required him to lifeguard mornings at the “Y”, teach SAT and GRE test prep classes, and work as an orchestra librarian to make ends meet (he spent most of that year thinking that electrical engineering would have been a good idea). One year later moved to Charleston, South Carolina as Principal bassist of the Charleston Symphony and quit his other jobs.
In 1999 he followed his wife, Joan DerHovsepian, to Houston when she got a job in the Houston Symphony viola section. This proved to be a great move, allowing Erik to complete a Master’s degree with Paul Ellison at the Shepherd School of Music, and enjoy the many professional opportunities our city has to offer. Besides being a member of River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, Erik is a member of the Houston Grand Opera and an active freelancer. He has performed with the Houston Symphony, the Texas Music Festival, the Houston Ballet, Mercury Baroque, and Ars Lyrica.
Each summer he participates in the Grand Teton Festival in Jackson, WY, where he spends much of his free time hiking, and the Peninsula Music Festival in Fish Creek, WI, where he spends much of his free time biking. He has toured with the New York City Opera Company, and participated in Music at Gretna and the Spoleto Dock Street Chamber Music Series. A dedicated teacher, Erik taught on faculty at the College of Charleston, and currently teaches each summer at the American Festival for the Arts here in Houston.
Erik and Joan have a five-year-old daughter, Clara, who can’t spend enough time in swimming pools. Erik enjoys sketching portraits, going to the gym, and hunting down fine wine bargains in his limited free time.
