Law Student Wins Music Award
Gregg Wager 1L plays piano in the Kendrick Hall student lounge.
Dec. 3, 2008 -- Gregg Wager 1L, a pianist and composer, has been named an ASCAPLUS Awards winner for 2008-09.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers recently recognized Wager for his work on two compositions he completed in 2007, an 80-minute string quartet and a solo percussion piece called “Col-Axial Popcorn.”
Wager has a doctorate in musicology from Free University Berlin and has taught music composition as an adjunct professor at State University of New York Purchase College. He served as a guest lecturer at the Korean National University of the Arts in Seoul last year.
The award targets primarily classical artists whose music receives play on alternative and college radio stations, and who make less the $25,000 a year from ASCAP royalty checks.
“I was, of course, very happy to receive the ASCAPLUS Award, or have any special recognition from ASCAP, which is such an important organization for composers in America,” Wager said.
But, rather than continue to pursue a university-level teaching position in music, for which numerous qualified candidates compete, Wager chose to enroll at the University of San Francisco to expand his base of knowledge by studying law.
Now 50, he has spent his life defending his identity as a composer. Whether he makes a full transition from music to law depends on how successful he is at the law school, Wager said.
He has so far skirted the predictable area of entertainment law as a focus, instead finding his early interests piqued by Native American and intellectual property rights law, while still remaining uncommitted.
He sees similarities between music and law, from the perspective that they require digging into treatises originating in antiquity and the Middle Ages. “Law brings with it the same sort of deep roots in the past, which makes for something interesting to sink your teeth into,” Wager said.
An early proponent of peer-to-peer music sharing, Wager enjoys Jimi Hendrix and other popular music, as well as classical, and he has written articles (including for The New York Times) extolling the growing influence of composers working on computers instead of at music industry recording studios.
Indeed, he estimates that about half of his own compositions, of which there are dozens, have electronic/digital elements. “I just find it a lot more fun to create musical worlds that have never been created before,” Wager said.
