SHE Festival Features Composer Libby Larsen for Virtual Residency

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Libby Larsen

The Department of Music presents Libby Larsen as part of the 2021 SHE Festival of Women in Music. Larsen is a noted composer and one of the most performed music creators in the United States. Her virtual residency includes three events, all open to the public, on Thursday, March 11. All events are free, but registration is required.

2 p.m. – Composition Masterclass
5 p.m. – Performance Masterclass
7 p.m. – Libby Larsen: My Life as a Composer

The masterclasses include Larsen hearing U of A music students. The composition masterclass includes students from Robert Mueller's composition studio with Larsen providing feedback and critiques of student works. Students from Moon-Sook Park's voice studio will perform work written by Larsen for the performance masterclass.

The composer's talk includes a reflective conversation about Larsen's life and her works. This introspective talk gives great insight to the working life of one of America's most prolific living composers. The public and students will enjoy learning about Larsen's experiences.

More information about the SHE Festival and all of the events included can be found at fulbright.uark.edu/shefestival

About Libby Larsen: Larsen (b. 24 December 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America's most prolific and most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of several hundred works spanning virtually every genre and has established a permanent place in concert repertory. Her music has been praised for its dynamic, deeply inspired and vigorous contemporary American spirit. Grammy Award winning, her music is constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists and ensembles around the world. A 2018 biography, Libby Larsen: Composing an American Life, by Dr. Denise Von Glahn, is available from the University of Illinois Press.

One of the most important and celebrated composers working today, Larsen is consistently sought-after as a leader in the generation of millenium thinkers; Larsen's music and ideas have refreshed the concert music tradition and the composer's role in it. 

She's been called "A mistress of orchestration" (The Times Union) as well as "the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively" (USA Today).  Gramophone has called her Symphony: Water Music "the finest water music since Respighi's Fountains."  "... her use of synthesized sound points to options that could help opera survive into the 21st century" (USA Today).

Larsen is a vigorous, articulate advocate for the music and musicians of our time.  In 1973 she co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composer's Forum, which has been an invaluable aid for composers in a difficult, transitional time for American arts. The first woman to serve as a resident composer with a major orchestra, Larsen has held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony. In 2006, Larsen held the Chair of Education and Technology at the John Kluge Center, Library of Congress. 

Larsen's awards and accolades are numerous; she was given a 1994 Grammy as producer for the CD The Art of Arleen Auger, an acclaimed recording that features Larsen's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her opera Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus was selected as one of the eight best classical musical events of 1990 by USA Today. She counts among her awards the Peabody Medal for Outstanding Leadership in American Music, the MIT McDermott Award, the McKnight Distinguished Artist Award and the American Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. Her music has been commissioned and performed widely by the world's greatest artists.