Music Biography
“The percussionist, Grant Hoechst, was the star here, for the sheer array of timbres he had available to him, and the vitality he brought to his performance.”
Grant Hoechst is a pianist, percussionist and composer in Los Angeles. He studied at Harvard College and hails from the DC Metropolitan Area. After seven years of piano lessons in his childhood, he made the switch at age twelve to the marimba, and then moved to orchestral percussion, which he studied with Doug Wallace.
Grant joined the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra in eighth grade, and was a member of the flagship philharmonic orchestra starting in his ninth grade year. He spent two years as principal of the section, enjoying performances in venues such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and the Music Center at Strathmore. In addition to the orchestra, he was a member of the American Youth Percussion Ensemble (also coached by Doug Wallace), which attended the Music For All Festival in Indianapolis, IN. Videos of percussion ensemble performances are included in the media section.
Grant became the principal percussionist of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, as a freshman, and stayed principal all four years of college. He studies privately with Sam Solomon. He has performed annually as a soloist and guest ensemble member with the Silk Road Ensemble under the artistic direction of Yo-Yo Ma.
For three summers Grant attended the Boston University Tanglewood Institute (BUTI) as a member of the six-week Young Artist's Orchestra Program, during which he studied with Tim Genis, Sam Solomon, Dan Bauch, Rob Knopper, Mike Israelievitch, Kyle Brightwell, and Matt Strauss. He performed under the batons of Ryan McAdams, Tito Muñoz, Ken-David Masur, and Paul Haas. Since then, he has attended the Zeltsman Marimba Festival, where he studied with Nancy Zeltsman and Pius Cheung, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival, where he studied with Luke Rinderknecht.
He also played vibraphone in his school jazz band, for which he won an award as an Outstanding Soloist on Lionel Hampton's "Flying Home" at the Heritage Music Festival in New York City.