Lorna Griffitt

Professor, University of California - Irvine, Lorna Griffitt, D.M., began her performing career at 16 as a soloist with the Louisville Orchestra under the direction of Robert Whitney, in a performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto in A Minor.Her teachers include Doris Owen (Bickel), Tong Il Han, Gyorgy Sebok and Maria Curcio. She received her doctorate with distinction in piano performance from Indiana University under the tutelage of Menahem Pressler. Griffitt  enjoys an active career as soloist, chamber musician and pedagogue here in the US and in South America, Europe and the Middle East. She began her teaching career in 1974 at DePauw University and joined the music faculty at the University of California, Irvine in 1993. During the summers, Griffitt is invited as guest artist at Orfeo Music Festival in Italy and to the International Cello Encounter in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she teaches, gives master classes and performs in concerto and chamber concerts with various international artists. She and violinist Haroutune Bedelian recently recorded the Six Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach with the Robert Schumann piano accompaniment which will be released for Centaur Records in 2008.