Mrs. Margaret Gries

Margret Gries enjoys a multi-faceted career in both performance and teaching. Since 1976 Gries has maintained an active professional career on the west coast as a member of several early music groups and is known best for her work as a harpsichordist and organist. She has also studied and performed extensively on early string instruments including Renaissance and Baroque violin and viola, and most recently on vielle.

Gries has been associated with the Vancouver Early Music Programme for many years, as faculty continuo player and lecturer in aesthetics, and is an adjunct instructor in the Baroque Vocal Programme. With Sand Dalton she has helped develop the Lopez Island Performance Seminar in the San Juan Islands.

An adjunct member of the faculty at Central Washington University since 1986, Gries has served both the music and philosophy departments, teaching courses in aesthetics, humanities, music research, music theory, music history, philosophy of music, and organ and harpsichord performance. She is also in demand as a coach and conductor for chamber orchestra and string ensembles, and for several years has served as conductor of the Jefferson Baroque Orchestra in southern Oregon.

A native of Western Washington, she studied music and philosophy at Pacific Lutheran, Yale, and Cornell universities.