Hello, friends and music lovers!  I’m Paul Groh, violist, composer, and friend of over thirty years’ standing to Christopher Kaufman, to whom I am everlastingly grateful for having set up this web page.  Thanks, Chris!
I was born and raised in the Detroit area and migrated to Australia in 2000.  I’ve had a long career in music as an orchestral violist, chamber musician, soloist, composer and arranger, as well as country fiddler, rock and roll bass guitarist, jazz banjoist, multi-instrumental experimental music specialist, and many etceteras.  For more on my background, read this interview with ANZVS – Issue 36 Meet the Violist v.2
I once had dreams of composing symphonies, concertos and operas, but I never got anywhere doing that.  Now I compose exclusively for the viola as a self-sufficient solo instrument, which has worked out very well for me.  My viola works reflect the full range of my musical experience and deal with such diverse subjects as marine life (Octopus, When Turtles Fly), birds (Penguins), animated cartoons (Jack Rabbit), children’s stories (Curiosity and the Giant Mushrooms) Japanese pop music (Para Para), mental illness and substance abuse (Monster of Attraction), and even serial murder (Kemper Variations).
To hear my solo recital at Spectrum in New York in April 2015, click on the bar at right. More about this Album HERE:
To read my articles on contemporary viola music, CLICK HERE!
To see my premiere of Marco Lombardi’s Mihrab, CLICK HERE!
If you speak Japanese, here is a short film made for Japanese television that includes an interview and clips from my solo concert in Tokyo in June 2012.  If you don’t speak Japanese, watch it anyway!  PRESS HERE!
There will be more music, articles and photos on this page in the near future, as well as an interactive blog, so stay tuned!
And, since no musician’s bio is complete without a dense forest of name-dropping: just for the record, I studied viola with Ara Zerounian, Nathan Gordon and Ellen Rose, composition with Marvin Lamb, Donald Erb and Harvey Sollberger, and conducting with Henry Charles Smith and Anshel Brusilow; I’ve premiered more new works than I can list but including some important ones like Mihrab by Marco Lombardi of Italy, Violas Terzet by Boaz Avni of Israel, and Totentanz by Stephen Rudko of the USA; in my rock and roll days I opened for Buddy Guy, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Hootie and the Blowfish; and when I was 21 I parked Frank Sinatra Junior’s car, and he gave me a bottle of vodka, which I kept for years.  Thanks, Frank!