Technically, Stanley Grill is a retiree. He completed a decades-long career in procurement in 2017. But almost immediately after that, he began directing a seemingly nonstop flow of energy into his first love: composing classical music.
“I just exploded,” said Grill, who was raised in the Bronx and now lives in New Jersey. “It was like 40 years of backlogged musical ideas burst out of me, and I started writing 20, 30 pieces a year.”
Since then, Grill’s music has been performed throughout the world. His compositions include vocal music, orchestral music, music for strings, chamber music, and piano music.
In March 2025, Grill learned that his work, "Gaia's Lament" won a Platinum Award for composition from the World Classical Music Awards juried competition. That followed a Platinum Award for another composition, "Symphony of Sighs," earlier in the year.
A few months before that, Grill's "Against War" album received the Clouzine International Music Award for Best Classical Album.
These awards are particularly meaningful for Grill because his contributions to his albums go far beyond writing the music. He is involved in nearly every step necessary to bring his music to life for audiences.
“I write the music; I hire the musicians; I do the recording; I do the production; I do the album artwork. I mail sound files to radio stations, and I send emails out to radio station hosts saying, ‘Here’s my latest. Check it out.’ I do that all myself.
“I realized that it’s great that I’m writing, but how is anybody going to ever hear it? I better do something more. So that’s what I’m doing now.”
Like a Duck to Water
To Grill, music is more than an interest or even a passion; it’s an obsession. And it has been since he was a preschooler. He still remembers the frustration he felt when he begged his mother to let him take piano lessons like his older siblings did. For what seemed like forever, she told him he was too young. But when he finally got to start, there was an instant connection.
“I just took to piano like a duck to water,” he said.
Grill would spend his childhood and early teenage years sharpening his musical skills. But even so, he questioned whether he should make a career out of it. In fact, even though he was accepted into a school for music and art in New York, he ultimately decided to attend a science high school. As it turned out, that was just where he needed to be.
“I met a piano teacher who just lit a fire into me,” Grill said. “So I spent three years of my science high school career cutting classes and running off to the practice rooms to play piano.”
After that, Grill attended the Manhattan School of Music. His plan? He would continue learning and practicing until he made it as a professional piano player. All of that changed, however, after he began his undergraduate studies in piano.
“I realized how much there is to know about music, and how little I knew, and I switched my major to music theory,” Grill said. “Not that it had the most practical career prospects, but I needed to understand the mysteries of music. How does it all hang together? What are composers thinking about when they’re writing the pieces that I’m playing, and how do you know how to interpret them?”
Grill loved it and went on to earn a master’s in music theory. After that, he began composing music.
“I finally felt like I understood enough about what puts classical music together and what its elements are to begin to write,” he said.
The Accidental Career Years
There would be another detour, however, before composing could be a full-time focus. After graduate school, Grill was paying the bills by teaching music theory classes at Manhattan School of Music and giving private music lessons. But after he and his wife welcomed a son to the family, he realized he needed better pay and medical insurance.
So he landed an office job with New York City Transit, where he had what he calls an entirely accidental career in procurement.
“Somebody there told me, ‘Our procurement department is struggling. I think you could do a better job than anybody helping them figure out how to put things through the pipeline and get it out the other end,’” Grill recalled. “I just sort of dove in and was there running the place for 15 years.”
After retiring from the transit authority, Grill took similar work, this time with a global engineering company that had him purchasing materials and managing contracts for large public works projects.
“They sent me all around the world. They’d say, ‘Go to England and find out what they’re doing wrong and see if you can fix it.’ I’d go over there for two weeks, three weeks, get things up and running and then go home again. I did that for almost 10 years.”
In 2017, Grill retired from full-time procurement altogether. He was finally free to devote the time he wanted to writing music.
Music from the Soul, for the Soul
Grill never really stopped composing. Even when he was working 60 hours a week in procurement, he managed to write four or five chamber works a year. But he longed to create so much more, and now that was possible.
These days, Grill has a daily writing routine.
“I have an idea in my head for how something is going to go. I may not know all the exact notes, but I’ve framed out how the whole thing is going to go. I lay out a blank score, and I put down the first note, and then I go to say to myself, well, what’s the next best second note? And I write it, and I keep going from there until I get to the end, following that general sort of idea that I had.”
Much of his music is influenced by Grill's love for medieval music, Renaissance music, and folk melodies. And it's inspired by nature and Grill's feelings about world events.
“The world I imagined I’d be living in at this time in my life didn’t turn out that way. I came of age in the ’60s. I thought we’d have more peace, we’d have more this, we’d have more that, and look where we are. So I write about that a lot.”
Grill’s latest album, “Music for the Earth,” is a musical call to action, a case for addressing climate change. It includes his award-winning composition, "Gaia's Lament." His album before that, “Against War,” is intended to encourage people to think about resolving disputes without resorting to violence.
When he reflects on his work as a composer, Grill is more convinced than ever that studying music theory in college was the right way to go. From what he’s seeing and hearing, there’s a need for classical composers with the technical training to compose effectively and the will to dig deep within themselves to create pieces with meaning.
“I hear a lot of music these days that’s sort of catchy but feels emotionally distant,” Grill said. “If that’s what you’re doing, it might be entertaining, but it’s not classical music.”
And what does qualify as classical music?
When he uses that term, Grill says, he’s not necessarily referring to works composed by Mozart or Beethoven. He's talking about the music's potential impact on listeners.
“There’s a difference in my mind between popular music and serious music that is intended to provide almost what I call a spiritual experience. You close your eyes, and that music opens up a whole world inside of you that changes you in some way.
"That’s what Bach was after when he wrote his music. I experienced that as a neurotic teenager in my house when I would put on the one classical album set my mother owned: Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” I would put that on in middle of the night while everybody was sleeping and just lie on my back staring at the ceiling listening to it and just find myself transported into the heavens. And I liked all the popular music at the time. I loved rock ’n’ roll. I still do. But they’re not the same.”
Worth the Effort
Even as Grill devotes extensive time and energy to making music, he never doubts that the rewards are greater.
“Since I’ve started recording, I just love that process. I love working with other musicians and going into a studio or in a hall with an entire orchestra and working with the engineers and working with the musicians, recording music, and seeing what I had imagined in my mind come to life. I’m flying when that’s happening. It’s great.”
Grill believes that for music to truly be impactful, though, everyone involved needs to invest something into it, and that includes listeners.
“The act of listening to music requires a similar diligence to what the composer does when they’re creating music,” he said. “Hearing music is more than the physical act of it coming into your ears. If you’re absorbing it inside your soul, then it requires an act of attention that you really have to work at. You really need to give yourself a quiet space to just have the music speak to you and follow its musical logic without a loss of attention.”
Those who do make that effort, he said, have so much to gain. Music can be a lifeline. A source of healing. Therapy. It certainly is for him, not only as a composer but also as a listener.
“Being alive is a troublesome thing. Everybody runs into dark times. So what gets us through that? For some people, maybe it’s religion. For me, it’s always been music. I can’t imagine a life without having had music as a source of sanity and solace.”
Grill’s music, including “Music for the Earth,” can be found on Apple Music, Bandcamp, Amazon Music, and Spotify.
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