Pierce Gradone is an award-winning composer whose music echoes the strange cultural brew of his musical formation, from playing bluegrass in the hills of Appalachia to sprinting the marathon of blinding-fast Pentecostal shout music. Described as “gorgeous, expansive” (I Care If You Listen) and “engaging” (Chicago Tribune), Gradone’s music integrates the shimmering timbres of untempered harmony with an incisive, funk-infused rhythmic vocabulary.
Gradone’s music has been performed throughout the world by Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Signal, Imani Winds, Riot Ensemble, Pacifica Quartet, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and many others. His music has been heard at a wide variety of festivals as well, including the Florida State University Festival of New Music, June in Buffalo, Ear Taxi Festival, Red Note Festival, Mise-En Music Festival, Soundscape Festival, Aries Composers Festival, Artosphere Festival, and the Great American Brass Band Festival.
He has received awards and commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, American Modern Ensemble, the Chicago DCASE, Access Contemporary Music, the LuminArts Foundation, Latitude 49, the Lyra Society of Philadelphia, Ensemble Dal Niente, Luna Nova, and Line Upon Line Percussion. In 2021, Gradone was awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Copland House. In 2025, he will be releasing an album of his works for winds featuring members of the Grossman Ensemble, Ensemble dal Niente, and the Chicago Wind Project.
Despite his southern roots, Pierce has enthusiastically embraced Chicago as his adoptive hometown, where he is a faculty member in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University.