College of Fine Arts & Communication

School of Music

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School of Music
Texas State University-San Marcos
601 University Dr.
San Marcos, Texas 78666
Office: 512-245-2651
Fax: 512-245-8181
music@TxState.edu

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Texas State > College of Fine Arts & Communication > School of Music > Faculty/Staff > Faculty Bios > Grant Mazak

Grant Mazak

I was born in 1957 in Bedford Pennsylvania. My father was a Pennsylvania State policeman and my mother was a housewife. I began singing in public at the age of 5. At 13, I received my first guitar for Christmas. Within a month I was playing guitar with my school folk group. Soon after, I began to perform as a solo act covering songs by acoustic oriented artists such as Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Jim Croce, and John Denver. At 17, I became a world traveler when my high school chorus toured and competed in a chorus competition in Italy. I also got in my first band in my senior year. It didn't go anywhere, but we played together just enough for me to get the bug. After graduation I met a drummer in a local music store and got into my first "professional" band. We played top 40 rock and I began working on my electric chops. I also began attending school at Mt Aloysious Jr. college. They had a music program and offered both guitar and voice. The guitar teacher was Ed McGuire, one of the finest teachers in Pennsylvania at the time. I graduated in 1978 after studying both voice and guitar. My last year was rough as I was struck by a car and hospitalised early in the semester.
Regrettably, I didn't go on to a four year school after graduation. The accident had taken too much out of me. That summer, I moved to Ohio and put together my first road band. We rehearsed for 4 months and played five week-long gigs before breaking up. I moved back to Pennsylvania and joined another band and began touring the southeast. I continued to study with Ed McGuire and whenever I was home and in 1981, I took the opportunity to enroll in the first semester of his "Guitar Academy." Ed envisioned a guitar school in line with the Guitar Institute of Technology that had recently opened in Los Angeles. Things went very well that first semester but Ed had a heart attack that summer and had to put plans for the school on hold while he recuperated. I was hired as a personal assistant to drive him and help him teach classes at Juniata college in Huntingdon, PA.
In January, Ed was diagnosed with cancer and passed away within weeks. I was grieving but somehow managed to teach Ed's classes till the end of that year . It was at this time that I got the teaching bug in a big way. Unfortunately, it was also at this time that I realised the value of an education when I lost my position for the next year to another of Ed's student who had a degree.
In 1985, I moved to Austin, Texas to explore the Austin music scene and escape a declining economy in Pennsylvania. Initially, the Texas economy wasnt much better, but things began to improve when I moved to San Marcos in 1986 to attend school at Southwest Texas State. The university's guitar teacher was William Gangel. He was trying to get support for a guitar program and I was one of his first students. I became his assistant and worked for him periodically even when I wasn't enrolled. Through William. I got involved in a music notation program that first piqued my interest in computing in music. At this time I was also working for (and occasionally studying with) Marion Williamson. Marion was also very interested in using computers in music and I soon received one of her hand-me-down computers, an Apple IIC. For the next several years, I worked in a local music store, taught guitar lessons and worked as an engineer in the recording studio owned by the music store.
In 1993, I opened my own music store in San Marcos. Soon after opening the store, I was approached by William Gangel and asked to teach a class in beginning guitar at Southwest Texas State. Nobody else wanted the job. My first class had ten students. I saw this as an opportunity to work in education and began building enrollment. Several years later I got back to work on my undergrad degree. In 2003, I graduated magna cum laude with a degree in classical guitar from Southwest Texas State University.
At present, I teach four classes at Texas State with a combined enrollment of over 200 students a semester. Some of my students have released CDs, some have joined national acts and toured the country, and some have signed major label recording contracts. I'm very proud of their accomplishments and look forward to greater things from my current and future students. In August of 2007, I will turn fifty and will marry the the most wonderful woman I have ever known. Not a bad bio... so far.

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