Meet the Composer

Kristin Kuster Ann Arbor, Michigan

Beneath This Stone (2007)

12 minutes
3(III=picc).2(II=corA).2(II=bcl).2—4.3.2.1—timp.perc(3)—harp—strings
World Premiere: March 21, 2008, Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, José-Luis Novo

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  Performed by the Annapolis Symphony
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Composer Kristin Kuster "writes commandingly for the orchestra," and her music "has an invitingly tart edge" (The New York Times). Ms. 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 was selected for the 2007-08 American Opera Projects' nationally recognized Composers & the Voice Series, in which she spent a year working with the company's Resident Ensemble Singers and writing for the operatic voice. In November 2008 the Heartland Opera Troupe premiered Ms. Kuster's opera The Trickster and the Troll, which draws upon Norwegian and Lakota folklore. The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra (ASO) commissioned Ms. Kuster for the Annapolis Charter 300 Young Composers Competition. In March 2008 the ASO premiered her new work Beneath This Stone, which musically captures the ebb and flow between the permanence and transience of historical renewal. Ms. Kuster also recently received a Jerome Foundation Commissioning Program Award through the American Composers Forum for her piece Perpetual Noon, which Boston Symphony flutist Jennifer Nitchman premiered 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 Sons of Norway, the American Composers Orchestra, the League of American Orchestras, Meet The Composer, the American Composers Forum, the National Flute Association, the Argosy Foundation, the Jack L. Adams Foundation, the Composers Conference at Wellesley College, and the Larson Family Foundation. She has received commissions from ensembles such as the Plymouth Symphony, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Cantori New York, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the New York Central City Chorus, the Heartland Opera Troupe, the Summerfest Chamber Series, 45th Parallel, Vox Early Music Ensemble, University of Georgia conductor John Lynch, and a consortium of wind ensembles organized by University of Michigan conductor Michael Haithcock.

Born in 1973, Ms. Kuster grew up in Boulder, Colorado. She earned her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Michigan, where she now serves as Assistant Professor of Composition. Ms. Kuster divides her time living in both Ann Arbor and New York City with her husband Andrew and son Odin.

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