Judith Shatin

Title: Respecting the First
Commission: 2009
Completed: 2011
Instrumentation: amplified string quartet and electronic playback
Premiere Location: Symphony Space, NY
Premiere Ensemble: Cassatt String Quartet
Notes:

Composer Judith Shatin is renowned for her acoustic, electroacoustic and digital music. Called “highly inventive on every level” by the Washington Post, her music combines an adventurous approach to timbre with dynamic narrative design. Described as “powerful and distinctive” by Fanfare and “both engaging and splendidly controlled” by the San Francisco Chronicle, her music includes chamber, choral and orchestral; electronic to electroacoustic and multimedia. An innovator, she often combines acoustic and electronic media, as in Ice Becomes Water (string orchestra and electronics fashioned from glacier field recordings). Her imagination is sparked by her multiple fascinations with literature and the visual arts, with the sounding world, both natural and built; and with the social and communicative power of music. Her music is recorded on more than 30 albums, with more in the pipeline! Shatin is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia, where she founded the Virginia Center for Computer Music and led the program to national prominence.