ERIC GRAHAM Biography
Eric Graham is active as a jazz bassist and composer. He has performed in
jazz venues from New York to California and currently resides in the Twin
Cities where he has appeared at the Dakota, Artists' Quarter, The Times,
Cedar Cultural Center, and other notable venues. An active studio and
touring musician, recently he was bassist on the album Beyond Blues which
won Minnesota Monthly's “Excellence in Music” award, and was for a time
a top 10 album on various national jazz charts.
Graham has been featured on the Today Show, C-SPAN, Christian Science
Monitor, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, and CBS
Radio. His compositions have been programmed at various contemporary
music festivals, including the Society of Composers National Convention,
Ernest Bloch Composers' Symposium, and NEA-funded Windows
exhibition. Recently the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra presented his work
c’TRANE b’TOK as part of their Chamber Music Series.
For his creative and scholarly endeavors Graham has received two Jerome
Foundation Travel & Study Grants, the Minnesota State Arts Board "Arts
Leader" Award, an LRAC/McKnight Foundation Career Development
Grant, a Mid-America Arts Alliance Grant, the Virginia Carty deLillo Prize
for Composition, a National Assembly of State Arts Agencies Scholarship,
a Peabody Institute Merit Scholarship, the ASCAP Raymond Hubble
Music Award, and a National Honor Society Scholarship. Additionally, he
has received both an Award for Excellence and Presidential Innovation
Grant from Century College as well as several student choice awards for
outstanding teaching.
Graham is a full-time music professor at Century College where he teaches
courses in jazz, world music, and popular music; he is also a music faculty
member at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and Minnesota State
College-Southeast Technical. He taught formerly at Moorhead State
University, Baker University, Washburn University, Kirkwood College,
University of Iowa, and University of Alaska.
Graham holds a Masters degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns
Hopkins University. He also studied jazz at the University of North Texas
and Hindustani music at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music. He was
raised in Barrow, Alaska -- an Inupiat Eskimo village 400 miles north of
the Arctic Circle.