Susan Kander

Susan Kander’s music has been heard across the United States and around the world including London, Paris, Mexico City, Lima, Birmingham, British Columbia, Capetown, St. Petersburg and Guangzhou. Commissioners include the National Symphony Orchestra, Opera Minnesota, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Opera Theater of St. Louis, Columbus Opera, Southampton Chamber Music Festival, the Copland Fund/Boosey and Hawkes, the Grammy Award-winning Kansas City Chorale, the Columbia Foundation and a variety of instrumentalists and ensembles.

Her chamber music has been recorded on the MSR, Navonna and Loose Cans labels. She received her BA in Music from Harvard University in 1979, then side-stepped into 15 years as a playwright before coming home to music. After a twenty-year career, she decided to blow things up, entering graduate school in composition in 2015 at Purchase Conservatory where she studied with Huang Ruo and Du Yun, earning an MM in Composition in 2017 and is a MacDowell Colony Fellow.

Susan Kander is published by Subito Music Corporation.

“My Beautiful Brown Boy” from dwb (2018), a chamber opera for African-American soprano or mezzo, cello and percussion
Libretto by Roberta Gumbel
Written for Roberta Gumbel, soprano and New Morse Code, Hannah Collins, cello and Michael Compitello, percussion

Black Tea Music handles promotion and select commissioning projects in collaboration with Subito Music Corporation.

Featured Works

dwb (2018), a chamber opera for African-American soprano or mezzo, cello and percussion
The News from Poems (2015), ensemble chamber opera
Once. Upon. A Time. (2017), for percussion sextet
Eavesdropping: Poems of Michelle Boisseau (2018), for soprano, violin and percussion

Links

Artist’s Website
Soundcloud

Black Tea Music · Susan Kander's Works

Audio

Susan Kander · Duo in Memory of the Littlest Refugees Who Never Reach a Place of Safety

Susan Kander · Six Bagatelles for Solo Piano

Susan Kander · My Lucky, for solo piano

Susan Kander · And the Lamp Tilted Near Them

Susan Kander · Etude for Two People and One Thing

Video

And Then Not, for clarinet and percussion
Gleb Kanasevich, clarinet
Doug Perry, percussion

Miranda’s Waltz, for narrator and orchestra
May 7, 2017
Australian Discovery Orchestra
Kevin Purcell, conductor
Madeleine Featherby, narrator
Ian Roach Hall, Melbourne

She Never Lost a Passenger
Lyric Opera of Kansas City
Harriet Tubman – Roberta Gumbel
William Still – Nathan Granner
Thomas Garrett – Cody Evan Meyer
Sarah Garrett – Deborah Stone