CAROL BARNETT - BIOGRAPHY

Carol Barnett’s music has been called audacious and engaging. Her varied catalog includes works for solo voice, piano, chorus, diverse chamber ensembles, orchestra, and wind ensemble. She was awarded the 2003 Nancy Van de Vate International Prize for Opera for her chamber opera, Snow, and Meeting at Seneca Falls was featured at the 2006 Diversity Festival in Red Wing, MN. Other recent works include The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass for VocalEssence and Monroe Crossing, Song of Perfect Propriety for the Cornell University Women’s Chorus, Music for Heroines for soprano and harp, and Tirana for the College Band Directors National Association, Minnesota Chapter.

She has been commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Harvard Glee Club, the Minnesota Music Teachers Association, and the Children’s Theatre of Minneapolis, and has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, the Inter-University Research Committee on Cyprus , and the McKnight Foundation.

A longtime presence on the Minnesota music scene, Barnett is a charter member of the American Composers Forum and a graduate of the University of Minnesota , where she studied composition with Dominick Argento and Paul Fetler, piano with Bernard Weiser, and flute with Emil J. Niosi. She was composer-in-residence with the Dale Warland Singers from 1992 to 2001, and currently teaches at Augsburg College in Minneapolis .

Artistic Statement

My work has developed along conventional contemporary-classical lines. I received a good basic education in the 18 th-19 th century Western classical masterworks, and my music grows out of that tradition. It has been supplemented by explorations of the Jewish liturgical tradition and the folk music of Greece , Italy , Russia , Southeastern Europe , and the Middle East .

I enjoy the challenge of using instruments in unusual combinations: SATB chorus with soprano saxophone or percussion battery, a duet for percussion and bass trombone, music for dance with clarinet, piano and tabla.

When writing, I often use preexisting material—folk melodies, literary influences, and, for vocal or choral music, the texts. I am most interested in communicating with my listeners by using musical language familiar to them, then adding something new—more complex harmonies, elements from a different musical tradition, or departures from the expected formal structure.

Since I am a performer as well as a composer, I understand the occasional need to write within the parameters of limited rehearsal time and modest technical accomplishment without “writing down” to the performers. I work rather slowly, striving for a balance of well-grounded formal structure with effortless flow from one event to the next.

I believe that music is a language based on nostalgia—remembered sounds which evoke other places, times and emotions. While writing accessibly, I try to find something unusual to say, something unique, magic, that bypasses intellect and goes straight to the heart.