Amelia Kaplan

From Wind Repertory Project
Amelia Kaplan

Biography

Amelia Kaplan (b. 1963) is an American composer and music educator.

Dr. Kaplan holds degrees from the University of Chicago (Ph.D., A.M) and Princeton University (A.B.), and she received a Diploma di Merito from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and a Diploma from the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau.

Kaplan's primarily gesture-driven music reflects the riotous mix of sounds and cultures cohabiting in our increasingly fragmented world. She seeks to create meaning by crafting, juxtaposing, and recontextualizing refined gestures, drawing on the myriad musical and non-musical sounds available from almost any time and place. In recent years her music has mostly responded to the ecological and political crises besetting our warming planet which we, as humans, seem to have no will to prevent.

Dr. Kaplan is a recent winner of a Copland House residency, and has had past residencies at MacDowell, Ucross, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has received commissions from the International Mise-En Festival, the Bent Frequency Duo Project, and bassoonist Benjamin Coelho, among others. Her works have been performed at festivals around the world, including the Mise-En Festival, the Thailand International New Music Festival, June in Buffalo, and others.

She has been on the faculty at Ball State University since 2011, where she heads the department of theory and composition and directs the New Music Ensemble. She previously taught at Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Iowa, and Roosevelt University.


Works for Winds


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