Kristin Kuster

From Wind Repertory Project

Kristin Kuster

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 has been selected for the 2007-08 American Opera Projects' nationally recognized Composers & the Voice Series, in which she will spend a year working with the company's Resident Ensemble Singers and writing for the operatic voice. Earlier this year, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra (ASO) commissioned Ms. Kuster for the Annapolis Charter 300 Young Composers Competition. In March 2008 the ASO will premiere her new work Beneath This Stone, which musically captures the ebb and flow between the permanence and transience of historical renewal. Ms. Kuster was also awarded a 2007 Jerome Foundation Commissioning Program Award through the American Composers Forum for her new piece Perpetual Noon, which St. Louis Symphony flutist Jennifer Nitchman will premiere at the National Flute Association Convention in August 2008.

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, the Argosy Foundation, the American Composers Forum, the Jack L. Adams Foundation, the American Composers Orchestra, and the Composers Conference at Wellesley College. She has received commissions from ensembles such as the Plymouth Symphony Orchestra, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the New York Central City Chorus, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, 45th Parallel, Vox Early Music Ensemble, conductor John Lynch and the University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, soprano Alissa Rose, and a consortium of university wind ensembles organized by University of Michigan conductor Michael Haithcock.

Ms. Kuster earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan, where she studied with William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, Evan Chambers, and William Albright. Born in 1973, she grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and now lives in New York City with her husband Andrew and son Odin.