Grand Electric is a new duo project that explores the sonic possibilities of the electric guitar and grand piano. The duo was created out of the desire to expand the boundaries of chamber music by fusing acoustic and electric realms.

Grand Electric

Mark Dancigers / electric guitar
Aaron Wunsch / piano

Mark Dancigers is a composer of chamber, orchestral, film, and solo instrumental works, and the electric guitarist for the new-chamber music group NOW Ensemble, which has performed nationally and internationally. Praised for his "entrancing" music in the New York Times, Dancigers creates scores that are melodically driven, texturally imaginative, and sonically vibrant.

After growing up in Virginia Beach, VA, and picking up the guitar at age 11, Dancigers studied composition at Yale, the Yale School of Music, and Princeton University (PhD), studying with composer and electric guitarist Steven Mackey. Dancigers' recent collaborators as a composer include Oscar nominated director Sam Green on the film The Measure of All Things, premiered at the Sundance Festival with live soundtrack performed by yMusic. Dancigers has also collaborated with choreographers Troy Schumacher and Justin Peck. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the New College of Florida.

Pianist Aaron Wunsch enjoys a multifaceted career as a performer, presenter, and educator. He performs solo, concerto, and chamber music on concert stages throughout the US, Europe and Asia. Lauded for his “masterful” chamber music performances (Hartford Courant), he has collaborated in performance with cellist Lynn Harrell, clarinetists Charles Neidich and Anthony McGill, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Jennifer Koh, and the Miró and Parker Quartets. He has worked closely with many renowned composers, including Thomas Adès, Nico Muhly, Kaija Saariaho, Sean Shepherd, and Mark Dancigers.

Wunsch studied at Yale University (B.A., cum laude), the Mozarteum in Salzburg (Fulbright Fellowship) and at the Juilliard School (M.M. and D.M.A.). He is currently a full-time faculty member at Juilliard, where he teaches chamber music and graduate studies and directs Juilliard PianoScope, the Piano Department’s performance series. He is Artistic Director of both the acclaimed Music Mondays concert series in New York City and Co-Artistic Director of the Skaneateles Festival, in the Finger Lakes. www.aaronwunsch.com.