Carla Kihlstedt (Composer, Lyricist, & Co-Director) is a veteran of folk/pop, contemporary classical, improvised and experimental music, she is a founding member of the bands Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat, Rabbit Rabbit, The Book of Knots, Minamo and 2 Foot Yard. Besides the music she’s written for her bands, her large-scale pieces include a song cycle for the International Contemporary Ensemble inspired by the language of dreams, a song cycle called Necessary Monsters for eight performers based on Jorge Luis Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings, and a musical/radio piece for the ROVA Saxophone Quartet about the coming of the Machine Age. Her shorter commissioned pieces include a song about the miraculous life journey of herring for the San Francisco Girls Chorus called “Herring Run”, a reflection of the surreal photography of Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison for the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, and a song for tenor and piano, entirely made of comments by women about their own bodies (commissioned by the New York Festival of Song). In 2014, her score for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s production of Romeo and Juliet was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award, and in 2015, she was given the Rising Star award for violin in Downbeat Magazine’s Critic’s Poll. She is on the faculty of the Contemporary Improvisation Department of the New England Conservatory, and of the MFA composition program of the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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