Amy Beth Kirsten

Amy Beth Kirsten (born 8/21/1972 in Belleville, Illinois) is honored to have received a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and Levy Supplemental Stipend for music composition. She was recently a finalist for the Rome Prize, received a Rockefeller Foundation Artist Fellowship, and was named a 2011 Artist Fellow from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism. Summer composition fellowships include those from Norfolk New Music Workshop, Bang on a Can, Mizzou New Music Festival, Music10, and at École Normale de Musique in Paris. In 2009-2010, Ms. Kirsten was named Missouri’s First Composer Laureate due to her close association with the state. Recent performances include those by Dark in the Song, Vicki Ray, Alarm Will Sound, Tim Munro, American Composers Orchestra—16th Annual Underwood Reading, l’Orchestre de la francophonie canadienne, Harbor Opera Company, San Francisco Cabaret Opera, Missouri Verses and Voices, and the award-winning choir Volti. Upcoming projects include a new orchestra work for Bowling Green New Music Festival (October 2011) and a collaboration with the Grammy-winning ensemble eighth blackbird (2011-2012).

Raised in the suburbs of Kansas City and Chicago, Ms. Kirsten received degrees from Benedictine University (B.A.), the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University (M.M.), and from Peabody Conservatory (D.M.A.). She has taught on the faculties of Peabody Conservatory, Towson University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut. Currently a freelance composer, she lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.