F. Clark Grogan grew up in Clearwater, Florida, where his involvement with music began early with his participation in church vocal and bell ensembles. These activities continued into his teens when lessons on the guitar turned his ear to the music of Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, and John Coltrane. It was because of this interest in serious improvisational music that Mr. Grogan was encouraged to pursue jazz studies at the University of North Texas. As an undergraduate student at UNT, Mr. Grogan wrote, arranged, and transcribed music for a contemporary jazz quintet specializing in the music of Carla Bley, Don Grolnick, Vital Information, Weather Report and many others. In addition to his involvement with improvisational music, he was beginning to be exposed to the compositional methods of contemporary classical music. Due to an increasing interest in contemporary classical music, Mr. Grogan began to pursue a degree in Music Theory while continuing his involvement with jazz music. After graduating from the University of North Texas in 1989, Mr. Grogan began to broaden his musical experiences in Columbus, Ohio. While pursuing a graduate degree in composition at The Ohio State University, Mr. Grogan wrote pieces for clarinet solo, string quartet, jazz tentet, and jazz quintet. He also began experimenting with a variety of methods of sound design. While pursuing graduate studies at Ohio State, he was employed as Assistant to the Music Director at St. Joseph Cathedral (a focal point of religius and art music in Columbus). At the cathedral, his duties included supplying a 40 voice choir and a myriad of ensembles with any arrangements or additional instrumental parts that were needed for their ambitious concert season. The ensembles ranged in instrumentation from organ, string orchestra, brass quintet to chamber orchestra. Mr. Grogan currently works as a freelance musician teaching 40 plus guitar lessons a week while composing for and performing with several ensembles in the greater Seattle, Washington area.