biography
Composer Kristin Kuster "writes commandingly for the orchestra," and her music "has an invitingly tart edge" (The New York Times). Kuster’s colorfully enthralling compositions take inspiration from architectural space, the weather, and mythology. She has been praised as a "wonderfully gifted composer reaching deep for meaning and expressive breadth." American Composers Orchestra (ACO) commissioned and premiered Ms. Kuster's "lush and visceral" Myrrha for voices and orchestra in Carnegie Hall in May 2006. Her orchestral work The Narrows won the top prize of ACO's Underwood Emerging Composer Commission—one of the most coveted opportunities in the United States for emerging composers—by being selected from eight finalists in the ACO's 2004 Whitaker New Music Readings. For ACO guest conductor Carl St. Clair, "all of the composers who participated in the readings were extremely gifted, but Kristin's musical voice was absolutely distinguished." Ms. Kuster was recently selected by Meet The Composer and the League of American Orchestras for the Music Alive: New Partnerships initiative, which fosters new relationships between composers and orchestras. Ms. Kuster was selected for the 2007–2008 American Opera Projects' nationally recognized Composers & the Voice Series, in which she spent a year working with the company's Resident Ensemble Singers and writing for the operatic voice. In November 2008 the Heartland Opera Troupe premiered Ms. Kuster's The Trickster and the Troll, which draws upon Norwegian and Lakota folklore. The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra (ASO) commissioned Ms. Kuster for the Annapolis Charter 300 Young Composers Competition. In March 2008 the ASO premiered her work Beneath This Stone, which musically captures the ebb and flow between the permanence and transience of historical renewal. Ms. Kuster's Lost Gulch Lookout was released in July 2009 on the NAXOS CD "Millenium Canons: Looking Forward, Looking Back" by the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, under the baton of John P. Lynch. Upcoming premieres include Here, Leaving with Sequitur, Perpetual Afternoon, commissioned by the National Flute Association for the 2010 Young Artists Competition, Midnight Mirror with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble String Quartet, and Little Trees with the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble. Ms. Kuster has many honors and commissions to her credit. Her music has received support from such organizations as the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2004 Charles Ives Fellowship), the Sons of Norway, American Composers Orchestra, League of American Orchestras, Meet The Composer, the Jerome Foundation through the American Composers Forum, the Argosy Foundation, the Jack L. Adams Foundation, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, and the Larson Family Foundation. She has received commissions from ensembles such as the Plymouth Symphony Orchestra, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, Cantori New York, the New York Central City Chorus, the Heartland Opera Troupe, the Summerfest Chamber Series, 45th Parallel, conductor John Lynch and the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, Vox Early Music Ensemble, and a consortium of wind ensembles organized by University of Michigan conductor Michael Haithcock. Born in 1973, Ms. Kuster grew up in Boulder, Colorado. She is an Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor with her husband Andrew and son Odin. © Copyright 2009 Kristin Kuster, All Rights Reserved. |
