WaterFire Providence, Festival Ballet Providence, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic are pleased to announce the award of a Meet The Composer New Residencies grant. These funds will enable Barbara Kolb, a talented composer living in New York City to relocate to Providence as a "Composer in Residence" for the next three years. Working with our organizations, Barbara will create new music to entertain, teach and inspire the community.
The purpose of Meet The Composer is to foster the creation, performance, dissemination, and appreciation of music by living composers. New Residencies is a national program of Meet The Composer supporting partnerships among composers, professional arts institutions, and community based organizations. Through New Residencies, a Composer in Residence creates music to celebrate the culture of the community. They teach, organize cultural events, promote local heritage, and help make music a positive force in community life.
Born and educated in Connecticut, Barbara Kolb has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship to Vienna, two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Institute of Arts and Letters award, and seven national Endowment for the Arts grants. In addition, Ms. Kolb became the first American woman to win the Rome prize in music composition (1969-1971).
Ms. Kolb's music is characterized by interwoven, impressionistic textures and freely atonal and deeply expressive harmonic language. Many of her works have drawn upon ideas and images having their sources in literature or the visual arts.
Ms. Kolb has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, IRCAM (Paris, France), the Fromm Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among others. She has held posts at Brooklyn College, Temple University, the Eastman School of Music, and The New School in New York City. In 1986, Ms. Kolb created a music theory instruction course for the blind and physically handicapped under the auspices of the Library of Congress. She was also a clarinetist in the Hartford Symphony for six years.
Barnaby Evans' WaterFire is an artwork involving movement, participation, surprise, water, fire and music. Music is an integral component to the sculpture. It interacts with the acoustics of the river walkways and the natural sounds of the 97 blazing fires. WaterFire is a perfect venue for sharing Barbara Kolb's music with the community.
Ms. Kolb will compose new works for the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and The Music School students. She will also be teaching Composition Class to The Music School students and other interested students. The Philharmonic and The Music School of the Philharmonic look upon the Meet The Composer collaboration as a meaningful way to expand the organization's mission to present classical and other orchestral performances and to provide divers music education programs at the highest level of artistic and academic excellence for enjoyment, education, and enrichment for the people of Rhode Island and Southeastern New England.
Festival Ballet Providence, the largest professional ballet company and ballet school in Rhode Island, is excited about working with Barbara to create a ballet to The Widow's Broom, written by Chris VanAllsburg, a local author of children's books. Barbara will write the music and Festival Ballet's Artistic Director, Mihailo Misha Djuric, will create the choreography to entertain children and adults.
Please join us to share the emotion, the excitement, the culture, and the
passion this grant brings to Providence.
