About
Greg grew up in southern Minnesota in the city of Albert Lea and after high school, he went on to the University of Minnesota. He has lived in the Grand Rapids area of western Michigan for the last several years. If you notice in some of his music titles, he also spends a great deal of time in Florida.
Greg recorded his newest recording “Another Time” © at Burnt Orange Sound Studios in Bradenton Florida and is presently preparing to record another album there very soon.
In his early years, in addition to school and his avid participation in athletics and also riding and showing Tennessee Walking Horses, he was still able to take piano lessons and have further musical instruction while he played the trombone in the school band up until high school. After those early years, playing the piano was merely for personal enjoyment and occasionally entertaining friends and family.
Sometime along the way, playing the piano for personal enjoyment became more of a passion for composing and developing his own music on the piano. It became more than just entertainment, there was meditation and solace just from playing and an outlet of expression for wherever his mind and heart could go with the music. Some of his music is just for pure fun. Most of the music that he has composed may have started out as just a sound or theme that he liked and then developed from there. Other pieces came out almost instantaneously from some mood he was in and the hardest part was trying to remember how it all went again.
Music
His musical influences are many and he enjoys almost any form and style of music. Certainly, he has been strongly influenced by early lessons in classical music and holds a great appreciation for the music of Bach and Mozart but is just as much influenced by country music and especially the Americana/Folk/Roots genre. He particularly enjoys and supports the music of people he has met or heard while on trips to Nashville for conferences and workshops and at other live music venues.
The prospect of recording, publishing or performing any of his own music publicly was not something that he had imagined and originally was never a goal of his playing or composing. Somewhere along the way, it became an aspiration. To achieve the goals of getting his music out into the public domain, he immersed himself into getting educated on his own about the music business and recording industry. He frequently attends various music conferences and workshops primarily in Nashville, Tennessee, and wherever else he can find connections. He has been a member of the Americana Music Association and NACUSA (National Association of Composers USA) for several years. He is also registered with the performing rights organization ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers).
Art
Greg is also an accomplished visual fine artist. His major area of concentration being landscape painting in oils on canvas and also drawing and painting in pastels. The artwork for the cover of his first CD, Greg Shoff at the Piano ©, is from a reproduction of part of one of his original oil paintings. A personal favorite of his own work, Canal at Matlacha Pass © was painted of a scene in Florida and was chosen because it fits nicely with the sounds and style of his music.
