Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider loves music so much, she might just eat it

"Any composer's relationship to music is intense, but Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose debut opera, Hildegard, receives its world premiere at the LA Opera this week, ratchets that intensity up to a higher, more metaphysical level. When Snider hears music, she says, she sometimes wants to eat it that's how deep the desire goes. She's not traditionally religious, but she has come to see music as a mysterious, divine force within her."

"Finding her own compositional voice wasn't easy, but the warm critical response to Penelope helped validate her singular language one that organically incorporates elements of classical, rock and pop, a blend she once felt ashamed to indulge. One of Snider's greatest assets is her natural facility in writing vocal music; she followed Penelope with another song cycle, Unremembered (2015), and the choral work Mass for the Endangered (2020), which married environmentalism with the traditional Latin requiem mass."

"The Princeton, N.J., native has had to overcome more than just mental health challenges her career, still on the rise, has been rife with roadblocks. One of the most significant dates back to her years in post-grad study at the Yale School of Music, where she sometimes felt creatively straitjacketed. She didn't write a note for the first six months she was there, afraid of breaking any of the academically sanctioned rules about what good music should sound like."

Sarah Kirkland Snider experiences music with visceral intensity, sometimes describing a desire to 'eat' music and seeing it as a mysterious, divine force. Her breakthrough song cycle Penelope tells of a traumatized husband returning from war and a wife aiding his recovery, and it resonated with her struggles with depression and anxiety. Academic pressure at the Yale School of Music initially stifled her creativity, leaving her unable to compose for six months. Critical acclaim for Penelope validated her singular voice that blends classical, rock, and pop. Her strengths in vocal writing produced Unremembered and Mass for the Endangered, and she now presents the opera Hildegard centering on Hildegard von Bingen.

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