About
Originally from upstate New York, pianist Gretchen Lindsay Hull now calls Northern California home. A dynamic recitalist, she has been hailed for her "extraordinary conceptual clarity" and ability to "demand the listener's attention." Gretchen has performed in Norway, Germany, and for numerous concert series throughout the US. Recent engagements include Music at Noon (Sacramento, CA), Noontime Concerts: San Francisco's Musical Lunchbreak, the Presidio Chapel Concert Series (SF), the St. Andrews Chamber Concert Series (Pleasant Hill, CA), and the Forte House (San Francisco, CA). In June 2024, Gretchen produced and performed in Calando: a chamber music benefit concert that succeeded in raising over $34,000 for World Renew's relief projects in Ukraine and Gaza (June 2024).
A fluent Norwegian speaker with a longstanding interest in the music of Norwegian composers, her earlier concert series, “The Glacier is Silent” explored the unusual and often unearthly beautiful music of a group of 20th century Norwegian composers in concerts on the East and West Coasts. In addition to raising the profile of lesser-known composers of the past, Gretchen also regularly promotes new music and has participated in multiple world premiers and recordings for living composers in recent years, including works by Diego Vega, Nate May, and David Lipten.
A semifinalist in the Pianale International Piano Academy and Competition (Schlitz, Germany), she has also been a selected participant at the rigorous Domaine Forget (Québec), the Chautauqua Piano Program, the International Keyboard Institute & Festival (NYC), and the Ringve Early Music program (Norway, harpsichord). Gretchen has been heard performing and/or been interviewed on the WCNY, WSKG, and WPEL radio stations, as well as WSKG’s television shows Artist Café and Expressions. Also sought-after as a teacher, her private students have won prizes or competed as finalists at the US Open Music Competition, the Artciál International Piano Competition, and the Charleston International Piano Competition, among others. In addition to her studio of approximately twenty students, she also serves as piano faculty at the Csehy Summer School of Music.
Gretchen completed her DMA and MM at Temple University (Philadelphia), where she studied with Charles Abramovic as a University Fellow. She received her BMus from Houghton University, where she studied under Leon Fleisher student William Newbrough. Other past and present teachers include Haggai Niv, Natalie Zhu, Rebecca Penneys, Michael Landrum, Samuel Hsu, and Monique Leduc. Graduate research areas included her dissertation on the signification of the sublime aesthetic in Romantic piano repertoire, a semiotic theory of sehnsucht in the music of Edvard Grieg, a linear-motivic analysis of Bartók's Piano Sonata Sz. 80 (Sostenuto e pesante), and a lecture-recital on Norwegian piano repertoire of the early to mid-20th century, among others. Gretchen maintains both her dog Mishka and her studio in San Jose. When not at the piano, she can occasionally be found over the chess board exploring dubious lines out of the Giuoco Piano opening.