Conductor | Educator

BOOM!

It’s one of Liza’s favorite words. And totally representative of the impact she makes on her orchestras and her audiences. Her energy is radiant and infectious and she gives it freely to every musician in orchestras she conducts. She is the founding Music Director of the Contemporary Youth Orchestra and the tour conductor for the rock group Styx.

PREMIERES

Liza has conducted over 500 world premieres including 10 concertos with members of The Cleveland Orchestra, full scale orchestral works by Pulitzer Prize winning composers including Bernard Rands, numerous works by professional and young and emerging composers and hundreds of orchestral rock works. All premieres has been performed with the composers present.

STAGES

Liza has conducted orchestras including the Nashville Symphony, the Jacksonville Symphony and CYO on stages including Blossom Music Center, Severance Hall, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nautica, Interlochen and Quicken Loans Arena. Liza has conducted major artists performing major works on these stages and more.

ROCK ARTISTS

Liza has worked with rock and pop artists including Ben Folds, Styx, Graham Nash, Pat Benatar, Twenty One Pilots, Jon Anderson, Ray Manzarek, Panic! At the Disco, Fall out Boy,  Coolio, Machine Gun Kelly, Bootsy Collins, Jefferson Starship and Weezer. The list of artists is long that she wants to create and experience with for her students and audience.

Producer

Liza is the executive producer of all CYO productions and has shared producer credit on shows for HDNet and AXSTV.

Reviews | Awards | Media

STRAD magazine called Liza “a master of tutelage...” That’s an understatement. Her student musicians are the real beneficiaries of her skill with the stick and the score. They don't just get excited to perform. They learn; they grow; they flourish. 

Liza and CYO are the recipients of awards including the Sunshine Award from Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio, the Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement and 3 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming

She has been featured numerous times on Cleveland Public Radio WCPN Idea Stream, Cleveland Classical, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, Scene Magazine, Cool Cleveland, Cleveland Institute of Music Radio ‘Off Beat’, Cleveland Classical Radio WCLV and Cleveland Classical.com. 

Liza Grossman and CYO can be heard on the self released CD, ‘IV: Four World Premiere Concertos’ (iTunes), New Door Records, ‘One With Everything; Styx and the Contemporary Youth Orchestra’ (iTunes), seen on AXSTV, PBS, Palladia and VH-1 Classic internationally with Styx, Jon Anderson and Jefferson Starship as well as the LIVE performance of the Alternative Press Music Awards. AXSTV airs ‘An evening with the Contemporary Youth Orchestra’  featuring three CYO concerts. 

PERSONAL

Liza spends time with her close group of friends,  lifts weights, watches concerts while on elliptical machines, enjoys slo-flo yoga, digs traveling, backyard fire pits, is a vegan and lives in a 100 year old craftsman house in an artsy neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio with her husband and their 4 dogs.