(This composer has multiple commissions - click here to view all)

Title: Famous Last Words
Commission: 2013
Completed: 2017, rev. 2020–21
Instrumentation: toy piano, harpsichord, and various percussion instruments
Premiere Location: 
Premiere Ensemble: Genevieve Lee
Notes:

Title: Minerva’s Pools
Commission: 1997
Completed: 1999
Instrumentation: string nonet 
Premiere Location: First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA
Premiere Ensemble: New Century Chamber Orchestra
Notes: Dedicated to Stuart Canin and the New Century Chamber Orchestra.

The music of composer and violist Kurt Rohde has been described as being “filled with exhilaration and dread. It’s a mirror of our times, It’s dark music, lit up by peckings, clackings, snaps and slides. It sounds eerie, but lyrical; sustained, but skittish; free-form, yet dancing” (San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin).

Musician Kurt Rohde plays viola, teaches and composes. Kurt lives in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land with his husband Tim Allen and their dog Hendrix. In addition to enjoying double IPAs, off-beat films, and long distant running, Kurt plays viola and is Artistic Advisor with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Artistic Director of the Composers Conference, a curator at the Center for New Music, and teaches Music Composition and Theory at UC Davis. Rohde has received the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, fellowships from the Radcliffe-Harvard Institute for Advanced Study and Guggenheim Foundation, and awards from American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations.