Sarah Kirkland Snider

Recently deemed “one of new music’s leading names” (Gramophone), one of the “Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music” (The Washington Post), and “a rising star on the American compositional scene” (The Wall Street Journal), composer Sarah Kirkland Snider writes music of direct expression and dramatic narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (The New York Times), “groundbreaking” (The Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). With an attention to detail that is “as intricate and exquisite as a spider’s web” (BBC Music Magazine), Snider’s music synthesizes diverse influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling. In a 2022 profile of her music, Gramophone wrote: “Expressive, evocative, and personal, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s music explores emotional landscapes through vivid, compelling narratives in a unique sound world that she has made identifiably her own – familiar, yet at the same time strange and unsettling.” Gothamist NYC writes: “Sarah Kirkland Snider is among the most impressive younger composers in the New York new-music scene. Her music can sound ageless and contemporary at once, with an emotional impact that's direct and immediate."

Snider’s works have been commissioned and/or performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Philharmonia Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Residentie Orkest; the Birmingham Royal Ballet and Miami City Ballet; the Emerson String Quartet, eighth blackbird, A Far Cry, The Knights, and Roomful of Teeth; soprano Renée Fleming, baritone Will Liverman, tenor Nicholas Phan, vocalist Shara Nova; Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo Emily D’Angelo; and percussionist Colin Currie, among many others. Her music has been heard in concert halls around the world including Carnegie Hall, the Elbphilharmonie, the Kennedy Center, Philharmonie de Paris, Lincoln Center, Sadler’s Wells, the Sydney Opera House, and Wigmore Hall; and at festivals including Aspen, BAM NextWave, Bang On a Can, Big Ears, Cabrillo, Colorado, Cross-linx, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Koorbiënnale, London Handel, Podium Esslingen, Ravinia, Sundance, and Tanglewood.

The 25/26 Season will see the world premiere of Snider’s first opera, Hildegard. Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival on a libretto Snider wrote herself, the opera is about twelfth-century German Benedictine visionary/polymath/composer St.Hildegard von Bingen. With two grants from Opera America, the opera has been workshopped at Princeton University Lewis Center for the Arts Atelier program (2023), Opera Fusion: New Works at Cincinnati Opera (2024), and Mannes College of Music (2025.) It will receive its world premiere at Los Angeles Opera November 2025 and New York’s Prototype Festival in January 2026, followed by performances by the Aspen Music Festival in summer 2026.  

Other recent major works include Forward Into Light, an orchestral commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by the American women’s suffrage movement; Drink the Wild Ayre, the final commission by the legendary Emerson String Quartet for their farewell tour; Everything That Ever Was, commissioned by Renée Fleming and Will Liverman for Liverman’s Grammy-nominated album, Show Me The Way; The Blue Hour, a collaborative song cycle for Shara Nova and A Far Cry string orchestra on poetry by Carolyn Forché; and new songs commissioned by Deutsche Grammophon for mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo’s 2022 Juno Award-winning Classical Album of the Year, Enargeia. In 2018, Embrace, her 45’ orchestral ballet with British choreographer George Williamson, commissioned by the Birmingham Royal Ballet, premiered at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre and was named Best Ballet Premiere of 2018 by Dance Europe. Mass for the Endangered, her 2018 Trinity Wall Street-commissioned 45’ work for SATB choir and ensemble – a celebration of and elegy for the natural world – has been programmed by dozens of choirs the world over, including Cappella Amsterdam, Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble, Conspirare, Houston Chamber Choir, the Oregon Bach Festival; Pacific Chorale, Phoenix Chorale, Schola Cantorum, the Three Choirs Festival, Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, Vancouver Bach Choir, Verdigris Ensemble, Vlaams Radiokoor, and Voces Solis, among others.