Composer and saxophonist Russ Grazier, Jr. is a native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the founder of the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center. Russ is primarily a classical saxophonist, having studied for seven years with Boston Symphony saxophonist Kenneth Radnofsky, but also ventures into the world of jazz on a regular basis. He has performed with the New Hampshire Philharmonic, the University of Chicago Symphony and throughout the country as a soloist. As an orchestral musician for theater productions, Russ has performed in more than twenty productions throughout the United States, and has performed in many of the regions top theaters including Seacoast Repertory Theater, Prescott Park Arts Festival, and Hackmatack Playhouse among others.

Russ studied composition with Pulitzer Prize winner Shulamit Ran, Andrew Imbrie, Robert Hall Lewis, John Eaton and Larry Bell. He is currently composing a new work for the women's chorus Voices from the Heart, commission by the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program and to be premeired in the Autumn of 2006. Winner of the Virginia Carty deLillo Composition Competition and the Randolph S. Rothschild Award in Composition, Russ has served as composer in residence with Chicago’s CUBE Ensemble and has had his works performed by the Contemporary Chamber Players of Chicago, the West End String Quartet, Baltimore’s Peabody Camerata, violinist Guillaume Combet, and pianists Kathryn Ananda-Owens, David Maiocco, Thomas McGinnis among many others.

Russ has been on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory, Roosevelt University in Chicago, the University of Chicago College and the Merit Music School in Chicago. In addition to teaching and serving as Executive Director of the Portsmouth Music and Arts Center, Russ is also on the music theory faculty of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School in Boston.