BIO/PRESS
“...a composer with an enviable knack for crafting moody, strikingly beautiful works.”
--Time Out New York
"Ms. Snider’s songs…had an elegiac quality that deftly evoked sensations of abandonment, agitation, grief and reconciliation …ably [demonstrating] the poised elegance of [her] writing."
--The New York Times
“...a startling new voice...”
--Bruce Hodges, Monotonous Forest
“...gracefully expansive...”
--The New York Times
“...the emotional immediacy and sense of narrative were arresting...”
--The Yale Daily News
“...indeterminately elegiac, or just plain lovely...”
--The New Haven Independent
"...the gem among the rest..."
-- The Manchester Evening News
“graceful, haunting, deft"
--MusicWeb-International.com
“...a highlight...good music that could have gone on longer.”
--George Grella, The Big City
"...Luminous romanticism...tender, lyrical and avuncular."
--The Glasgow Herald
“...as easy on the ears as it is demanding
of the mind.”
--Hotel St. George Press
Sarah Kirkland Snider strives to write music of direct expression and dramatic narrative. Her music has been performed by artists and ensembles from around the world including Signal, Colin Currie, Dinosaur Annex, Hebrides Ensemble, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Knights, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Psappha, Newspeak, Eclipse Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini, and many others, in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, Merkin Hall, the Colorado Music Festival, the Bang On a Can Summer Festival, the MATA Festival, the Getty Museum, June in Buffalo, the Look & Listen Festival, Music With a View, Make Music New York, and the Keys to the Future Contemporary Piano Music Festival to New York multimedia art cabarets such as (le) Poisson Rouge, Galapagos Art Space, The Red Bull Theater, Theater for the New City, and many others.
Her most recent music explores her love of songwriting. These works include Penelope (2008), a one-woman-and-string-quartet music-theater piece with acclaimed playwright Ellen McLaughlin, commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Center, and Until I Became Human (2007), an orchestral song set for mezzo and viola commissioned by Dinosaur Annex, and the Community Music Center of Boston, set to the poetry of Ivanna Yi. In 2009 Sarah composed a concert version of Penelope for the ensemble Signal (led by acclaimed conductor Brad Lubman), whose premiere The New York Times praised for “[having] an elegiac quality that deftly evoked sensations of abandonment, agitation, grief and reconciliation...ably [demonstrating] the poised elegance of Ms. Snider’s writing.” She then reworked the songs yet again, this time tailoring them to the unique talents of vocalist Shara Worden--singer/songwriter of the band My Brightest Diamond--and an expanded ensemble version of Signal, who together with Worden recorded the songs as an album to be released by New Amsterdam Records in 2010.
Upcoming projects include the presentation of both a full string orchestra version and a small ensemble version of Penelope, featuring Shara Worden, to venues around the country, as well as new works for yMusic, NOW Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion, janus, and violist Nadia Sirota. Down the road, she looks forward to work on The Sybil of the Rhine, an opera with writer Alex Rose.
Sarah is also active as a promoter of new music in New York and beyond. From 2001-2007 she co-curated the Look & Listen Festival, a new music series set in modern art galleries. She now acts as Co-Director, along with William Brittelle and Judd Greenstein, of New Amsterdam Records, an independent record label recently called “the focal point of the post-classical scene,” (Time Out New York) and “emblematic of an emerging generation” (The New York Times), and praised for “releasing one quality disc after another” (Newsweek.)
Sarah has an M.M. and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. In 2006 she was a Schumann Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. She has studied with David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Christopher Rouse, and Justin Dello Joio, among others. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband, Steven, and their baby son, Jasper.
