From MSU News Service
A new episode of “11th and Grant” featuring Eric Funk will air on Montana PBS at 7pm Thursday, April 18th.
Funk, a retired Montana State University music professor, is a renowned composer, conductor and pianist. He also serves as the artistic director for “11th and Grant.”
As a composer, Funk is known for merging contemporary music with older styles. He studied composition with Tomas Svoboda, Sandor Veress and Krzysztof Penderecki and interviewed Nadia Boulanger in Paris. After composing more than 180 works, Funk has received several awards, including a Governor’s Award for the Arts, the 2018 Global Music Award with gold medals for classical music and composition, and multiple Northwest Emmy awards.
Funk taught at MSU for 20 years and received an honorary doctorate from the university in 2023.
MSU photo by Kelly Gorham
“I’m excited to have had the opportunity to showcase the 1899 Steinway A grand piano donated to Montana PBS by the Jessica Palmer and Andre Melief family in memory of Andre Melief,” Funk said. “The music I chose to play isn’t dramatic or virtuosic, rather a cross section of more gentle pieces, which I hope our viewing audience will enjoy. In many cases I combined a well-known classical piece, often as an introduction, with a well-known popular music piece. My objective was to reveal the range of this wonderful piano and the varied styles of music and musicians we feature on ‘11th and Grant.’ It’s a rather intimate episode.”
“11th and Grant” is an Emmy-winning series that invites respected Montana musicians into viewers’ homes. It fuses in-depth interviews with performances in the KUSM-TV studio, located at the corner of South 11th Avenue and Grant Street on the MSU campus in Bozeman.
For more details about the series, visit watch.montanapbs.org/show/11th-and-grant. Viewers can watch the new episode at 7pm April 18th on television, online at watch.montanapbs.org/livestream or on the Montana PBS Facebook page at facebook.com/MontanaPBS. •
