Gregory Wiest, was born in July, 1952, in Cambridge, Maryland and grew up in Laurel, Delaware, USA. His classical musical training began at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland. After receiving his Bachelor of Music degree in applied voice, he went on to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to expand his operatic education. After three years there, having studied voice with Margaret Harshaw and acting with Dino Yannopoulos, and after having received his Certificate, he accepted a DAAD(German Academic Exchange) grant for one year of study at the Munich Music Academy in Munich, Germany. After his grant expired, he managed to stay on two more years at the Munich Music Academy and continued to study Lied and oratorio literature with Ernst Haefliger and Lied literature with Erik Werba.
For the 1980/81 season Mr. Wiest was engaged as a soloist at the Südostbayerische Städtebundtheater in Passau. After that he spent some fifteen years free-lancing; singing oratorios, early music, obscure chamber operas and jobs with the Munich Radio Chorus.
An attempt to establish another free-lance base in Salzburg failed, making it necessary for him to take a steady job singing in the chorus at the Gaertnerplatz Theater in Munich, in 1992. There he is today.
His euphemisms for his work there include:
D - 1995: Mr. Wiest works as part of the scenery at a well-know state theater in Munich.
- 1997: Mr. Wiest works as part of the interior decoration in a state-run music museum which exhibits the works of dead composers.
- 1999: At the moment Mr. Wiest is part of the biological base of an operatic reprocessing plant.
- 2001: At the moment he works as a pixel in the virtual perception of a state-owned company whose goal it is to keep the past alive.
- 2003: At the moment he is taking part in a conspiracy, whose goal it is to prevent the sun from rising.
- 2005: As of 1992, Mr. Wiest holds a position in a temple devoted to the German gods of music in Munich.
- 2007: Currently Mr. Wiest makes his living as a disposable quantity in a state institution for fantasy.
- 2009: Currently Mr. Wiest is the second person from the left for a state-run self-portrait agency.
The security of his position at Gaertnerplatz has allowed Mr. Wiest to pursue his interest in modern American music. With the help of the American Music Center library, he put together and performed his first program of modern American songs in a friend's living room in the fall of 1993.
The performance of his next program, in 1995, was canceled a week before the performance for reasons which have little to do with noble human nature. That project ended with a hastily thrown together recording in a friend's basement.
In 1997, he sang his Time Marches On program in the Amerika Haus in Munich.
His Who Is Now program was performed in the Echtzeithalle im Einstein in Munich, Germany on October 23, 1999.
The program, Another Five, was performed on November 18, 2001 in the Kleiner Konzertsaal im Gasteig in Munich, Germany.
His next four programs, Foreign Impressions (November 17, 2003), Love, War and Dying (July 10, 2005), To Be Heard (March 25, 2007) and Old Dreams (March 29, 2009) were performed in Movimento in Munich, Germany.