Seth Grosshandler received his B.A. in Music from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1979, with a focus on music composition.  His thesis composition - a Quintet for Piano and Winds – won the Reed College Class of 1921 Award, given for “creative work of notable character, involving an unusual degree of initiative and spontaneity.”  He then spent a year in Paris, France, studying composition and orchestration, before going to law school. During law school and throughout his brief (35-year) gig as a lawyer, he performed as a pianist in several chamber music concerts in the New York City and Chicago areas.  Since retiring as a lawyer in mid-2018, he has focused again on composition, while continuing to perform his own and others’ works. 

He has received three commissions for orchestral pieces:  the first, from the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in Ithaca, New York, was premiered in June, 2022; the second, from the Symphony of the Mountains in Kingsport, Tennessee, opened a concert with Béla Fleck in September, 2022; and the third, from the New York Classical Players for a cello and string orchestra piece that was premiered in April, 2024 in Manhattan. The Concertino for Cello and Strings was also performed at the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival, where Seth is composer-in-residence, in November, 2024. A revised version of Mountain Festival Overture was performed by the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in San Francisco on November 18, 2023 as part of the California Festival: A Celebration of New Music , and a revised version of Cayuga Overture — re-scored for full symphony orchestra — was premiered by the Brooklyn Chamber Orchestra in May, 2023 and was also played at Carnegie Hall in September, 2024.

His Three Songs (Poems of Clément Marot) were performed in January 2023 at a Salon de Virtuosi concert at the Kosciuszko Foundation in Manhattan, and were also performed at a house concert of the Brooklyn Art Song Society at the end of April, 2023. His Suite for Clarinet Quintet was premiered by the Ulysses Quartet and Oskar Espina Ruiz, clarinet, at the Treetops Chamber Music Society in New Canaan, Connecticut, and at Music Mountain in Falls Village, Connecticut in the spring and summer of 2023, and will be performed in 2024 at the Hotchkiss Library in Sharon, Connecticut and at the Candelight Concert Society in Maryland. His Sonata for Violin and Piano was premiered on a livestream by Suite Française (at suitefrancaise.org) in December, 2020, was played in a series in Livingston, New York of Jazz and Classics for Change in the spring of 2023, and was performed at Merkin Hall in Manhattan by Christina Bouey, violin, and Max Levinson, piano, in February, 2024. Finally, he has written a solo piano piece, in the style of Robert Schumann, that will be performed in a film by Isabel Hagen, entitled “On a String”, with filming taking place in the fall of 2023. It was also performed at the Merkin Hall concert.

His latest piece, Dances for String Quartet, was premiered by the Ulysses Quartet at the Howland Chamber Music Circle in Beacon, New York, in November, 2024. A revised version will be premiered in Europe at the Ortus Festival in Cork Ireland by the Marmen Quartet, and in the United States at the Treetops Chamber Music Society by the Terra Quartet, in each case on March 2, 2025. The Marment Quartet will also play the piece at the Crescent City Chamber Music Festival in New Orleans on March 16, 2025.

His latest work, commissioned by the series Close Encounters with Music in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is for piano, clarinet and cello and will be premiered in June, 2025.

Seth will also be performing at Zankel Hall (Carnegie Hall) in May, 2025, as part of the After Arts organization. He will be playing the piano part in the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Opus 1., No. 3.

Seth is also a visual artist, focusing on printmaking.  He has been a student of Wendy Shalen and Bill Behnken at the Art Students League and of Elaine Brieger at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.  He uses discarded materials such as packing materials and old record albums to create plates from which he creates monoprints (often using chine collé) that either stand on their own or are further manipulated in collages or elaborated with hand painting.  Several of his monoprints were selected to be shown and sold at the Art Students League booth at the Affordable Art Fair in New York City in March, 2022.