Laura Kaminsky

PDF version

Laura Kaminsky “makes the most of textures, sometimes delicate and almost weightless, sometimes thick and convoluted, but always vivid.” (Washington Post)  “Full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection, (her music) is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide) As One (American Opera Projects/BAM), the most produced contemporary opera in the U.S., has played in Canada, Europe and Australia. Hometown to the World (Santa Fe Opera) premieres 2021; Finding Wright (Dayton Opera), 2022. Fantasy: Oppens Plays Kaminsky (Cedille Records, 2021) features pianist Ursula Oppens, Cassatt String Quartet, pianist Jerome Lowenthal, ASU Symphony Orchestra/Maestro Jeffery Meyer. 

Scores: Bill Holab Music

Recordings: Affeto, Albany, Bridge, BSS, Cedille, CRI, Capstone, Mode, MSR, and Navona labels.  A complete list of available recordings can be viewed at the Buy CDs page. Kaminsky is a BMI composer.

Laura Kaminsky’s music is “full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection. It is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide) As “one of the top 35 female composers in classical music,” she “makes the most of textures, sometimes delicate and almost weightless, sometimes thick and convoluted, but always vivid.” (The Washington Post)

As One (2014; co-librettists Mark Campbell & Kimberly Reed; American Opera Projects/BAM), the most produced contemporary opera in the U.S., has been mounted in Canada, Europe and Australia, with close to 50 productions to date. Hometown to the World (Santa Fe Opera & Opera for all Voices, a co-commission with Hawaii Opera Theatre) premieres 2021; Finding Wright (Dayton Opera), in 2022. She is co-librettist (with novelist Lisa Moore) and composer for February (Opera on the Avalon, 2023). Fantasy: Oppens Plays Kaminsky (Cedille Records; 2021) features pianist Ursula Oppens, Cassatt String Quartet, pianist Jerome Lowenthal, ASU Symphony Orchestra/Maestro Jeffery Meyer. Kaminsky is head of composition at Purchase College Conservatory of Music/SUNY. laurakaminsky.com

Scores: Bill Holab Music

Recordings: Affeto, Albany, Bridge, BSS, Cedille, CRI, Capstone, Mode, MSR, and Navona labels.  A complete list of available recordings can be viewed at the Buy CDs page. Kaminsky is a BMI composer.

Laura Kaminsky, cited in The Washington Post as “one of the top 35 female composers in classical music,” frequently addresses critical social and political issues in her work, including sustainability, war, and human rights. Possessing “an ear for the new and interesting” (The New York Times), “her music is full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection. It is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide).

Her first opera, As One, (2014; co-librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed) is the most produced contemporary opera in North America, with close to 50 productions to date in the U.S., as well as across Europe, Canada and Australia. “As One is a piece that haunts and challenges its audience with questions about identity, authenticity, compassion, and the human desire for self-love and peace” (Opera News). The original cast recording on the BSS label was named one of the best new opera recordings of 2019 by Opera News. The As One team has since been commissioned twice—by Houston Grand Opera for Some Light Emerges (2017) and Opera Parallèle/American Opera Projects for Today It Rains (2019).

With Reed, she has created Hometown to the World,inspired by the devastating Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Postville, IA in 2008, commissioned by The Santa Fe Opera and Opera For All Voices as a co-commission with Hawaii Opera Theatre. Upcoming are Finding Wright (librettist Andrea Fellows Fineberg; Dayton Opera; 2022) and February (co-librettist with novelist Lisa Moore; Newfoundland’s Opera on the Avalon; 2023). A new work, Uncover, for Hub New Music will premiere at the Morgan Library and Museum in 2022.

Recent recordings include Fantasy: Oppens Plays Kaminsky (Cedille Records CDR 9000 202) and Blythe Gaissert: Home (Bright Shiny Things BSTC-0137). Fantasy features iconic pianist Ursula Oppens performing Piano Concertowith the ASU Symphony Orchestra (Jeffery Meyer, music director), Piano Quintet with the Cassatt String Quartet, the solo Fantasy, and Reckoning: Five Miniatures for America for piano four-hands, where Oppens is joined by Jerome Lowenthal. On Home, Carne Barata (Scene 8 from Hometown to the World) is one of nine works responding to Gaissert’s challenge “what is home?”

Grants, awards and fellowships include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Opera America, Chamber Music America, BAM/Kennedy Center De Vos Institute, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Newburgh Institute for Art and Ideas, Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music, American Music Center, USArtists International, CEC ArtsLink International Partnerships, Likhachev-Russkiy Mir Foundation Cultural Fellowship, Kenan Institute for the Arts, Artist Trust, New York State Council on the Arts, Bronx Arts Council, Arts Westchester, North Carolina Arts Council, Seattle Arts Commission, and Meet the Composer. She has received six ASCAP-Chamber Music America Awards for Adventuresome Programming, a citation from the Office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan, the 2016 Polish Gold Cross of Merit (Zloty Krzyż Zasługi RP) awarded by the President of Poland for exemplary public service or humanitarian work, and the Polish Ministry of Culture National Heritage 2010 Chopin Award. She has been a fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Centrum Foundation, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Camargo Foundation (France).

Scores: Bill Holab Music

Recordings: Affeto, Albany, Bridge, BSS, Cedille, CRI, Capstone, Mode, MSR, and Navona labels.  A complete list of available recordings can be viewed at the Buy CDs page. Kaminsky is a BMI composer.

PDF version

Laura Kaminsky, cited in The Washington Post as “one of the top 35 female composers in classical music,” frequently addresses critical social and political issues in her work, including sustainability, war, and human rights. Possessing “an ear for the new and interesting” (The New York Times), “her music is full of fire as well as ice, contrasting dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection. It is strong stuff.” (American Record Guide).

Her first opera, As One, (2014; co-librettists Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed) is the most produced contemporary opera in North America, with close to 50 productions to date including in Europe, Canada and Australia. “As One is a piece that haunts and challenges its audience with questions about identity, authenticity, compassion, and the human desire for self-love and peace” (Opera News). The original cast recording on the BSS label was named one of the best new opera recordings of 2019 by Opera News.

The As One team has since been commissioned twice—by Houston Grand Opera for Some Light Emerges (2017), described in the Houston Chronicle as “nothing short of a pronunciation of American ideals. The piece remained sublime, a testament to both the performers and the writing” — and by Opera Parallèle/American Opera Projects for Today It Rains (2019). The San Francisco Chronicle review of Today It Rains noted that “the inventive charm of Kaminsky’s music keeps finding new sonic possibilities with economical resources. (She) shows a blessed willingness to write dramatic music with a strong rhythmic backbone. Today treads with suave assurance through the fields of both sexual and artistic politics. It comes as a welcome bestowal from a team of artists plowing new and interesting terrain. It seems ripe for adoption by opera companies nationwide.”

With Reed, she has created Hometown to the World, inspired by the devastating Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Postville, IA in 2008, commissioned by The Santa Fe Opera and Opera For All Voices as a co-commission with Hawaii Opera Theatre. A digital premiere by Hawaii Opera Theatre is slated for Spring 2021, with the stage premiere at Santa Fe to take place in December. Upcoming are Finding Wright (librettist Andrea Fellows Fineberg; Dayton Opera; 2022) and February (co-librettist with novelist Lisa Moore; Newfoundland’s Opera on the Avalon; 2023). A new work, Uncover, for Hub New Music will premiere at the Morgan Library and Museum in 2022.

Her string quartet, Rising Tide, is the musical centerpiece of The Crossroads Project, a multi-disciplinary performance where science and the arts merge to address environmental sustainability. The brainchild of physicist Dr. Rob Davies, the Crossroads Project brings together spoken word, visual art and music; a film version was released in 2020. Of the CD (Navona Records NV6054; 2016), The Boston Globe asserts that “Rising Tide” moves from organic, eddying lines to more rigid structures. In “H20 (Source of Life),” a lonely solo voice meanders through layers of shifting strings, amassing momentum and might until all four lines are crashing forward in rapids that diminish to the solo again. “Bios” and “Forage” evoke the pulsing lives of plants and animals, and “Societas” deconstructs into haunting, harried almost-chaos among innumerable towers of chords.”

Other recent recordings include Fantasy: Oppens Plays Kaminsky (Cedille Records CDR 9000 202) and Blythe Gaissert: Home (Bright Shiny Things BSTC-0137).  Fantasy features iconic pianist Ursula Oppens performing Piano Concerto with the ASU Symphony Orchestra (Jeffery Meyer, music director), Piano Quintet with the Cassatt String Quartet, the solo Fantasy, and Reckoning: Five Miniatures for America for piano four-hands, where Oppens is joined by Jerome Lowenthal. Of the CD’s title piece, New York Classical Review describes how the”extensive Fantasy for solo piano explores, in episodic fashion, piano sonorities from Debussyesque gongs and watery burbles to jazzy dialogue between the hands.”  Allan Kozinn notes in The Portland Press Herald that the Piano Quintet “is a comment on the chaos and brutality of what passes for political discourse in Trump-era America.”

On Home, Carne Barata (Scene 8 from Hometown to the World) is one of nine works responding to Gaissert’s challenge “what is home?”  With Reed’s libretto, Carne Barata offers a heartrending lamentation of the plight of immigrants to this country with its brutal track record of offering sanctuary, with Gaissert singing the character Linda Morales’ cry, “America is impossible…without us.”

Awarded the 2016 Polish Gold Cross of Merit (Zloty Krzyż Zasługi RP), a decoration awarded by the President of Poland for exemplary public service or humanitarian work, Kaminsky’s other grants, awards and fellowships include those from the National Endowment for the Arts, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Opera America, Chamber Music America, BAM/Kennedy Center De Vos Institute, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund, Virgil Thomson Foundation, Newburgh Institute for Art and Ideas, Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music, American Music Center, USArtists International, CEC ArtsLink International Partnerships, Likhachev-Russkiy Mir Foundation Cultural Fellowship, Kenan Institute for the Arts, Artist Trust, New York State Council on the Arts, Bronx Arts Council, Arts Westchester, North Carolina Arts Council, Seattle Arts Commission, and Meet the Composer. She has received six ASCAP-Chamber Music America Awards for Adventuresome Programming, a citation from the Office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan, and the Polish Ministry of Culture National Heritage 2010 Chopin Award. She has been a fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Centrum Foundation, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Camargo Foundation in France.

Kaminsky’s works are frequently performed across the U.S. and abroad. Her music has been presented in New York at BAM, Miller Theater, Bargemusic, The Greene Space, Subculture, Merkin Concert Hall, Here Arts Center, Weill Recital Hall, Symphony Space, Skirball Center, Greenwich House, Tenri Cultural Center, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York Society for Ethical Culture, Robert Miller Gallery, and the 92nd Street Y, among other venues. Internationally, she has been featured at Wigmore Hall and King’s Place (London); Glinka Hall, Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory of Music, and Dostoevsky Museum (Russia); Fundacion Juan March (Madrid); Naregatsi Art Institute and Philharmonic Hall (Yerevan, Armenia); Forum of Contemporary Music Leipzig and Ballsaal-Studio Berlin (Germany); Bratislava Conservatory of Music (Slovakia); Vernissage Salzburg (Austria); and the American Embassy in Ghana, among others.

She has been a featured composer at Boston, Oberlin, Purchase and Shanghai Conservatories; North Carolina School of the Arts; Peabody Institute of Music; Mannes College of Music; Westminster Choir College; Cornish College of the Arts; CalArts; Longy School of Music; Cincinnati Conservatory of Music; Tisch School of the Arts/NYU; The Juilliard School; Hartt School of Music; Bard, Hunter, St. Olaf’s, Doane, Earlham, Augustana, and Sarah Lawrence Colleges; Carnegie Mellon University; Universities of Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Puget Sound, Puerto Rico, Utah, Washington; and the National Academies of Music of Armenia, Ghana and Slovakia; at the Wolfson Center for National Affairs at the New School; Vernon Center for International Affairs at New York University; and at festivals including the Seattle Chamber Music Festival; Soundfest Summer Institute and Festival (Cape Cod); Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival (VT); Seal Bay Chamber Music Festival, Bar Harbor and Atlantic Music Festivals (ME); Connecticut Summerfest; International Festival (Skopje, Macedonia); International Festival of Women Composers (São Paulo, Brazil); Casalmaggiore International Music Festival (Italy); and others.

Kaminsky has been a panelist and/or adjudicator for the NEA, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Chamber Music America, Opera America, American Opera Projects, New England Foundation for the Arts, CEC ArtsLink, Yaddo, Meet The Composer, American Music Center, Newmusic USA, Cary Trust, Creative Capital, USArtists International, among many.

Currently a Composer Mentor for Juilliard School of Music’s Blueprint Fellowship Project and Artistic Director of The American Opera Project Advisory Council, Kaminsky served as Composer Mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative from 2019-2020. She is chair of the composition department at the Conservatory of Music Purchase College/SUNY, where she was dean from 2004–2008. Previously she was chair of the music department at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, and in New York held the positions of Artistic Director of Symphony Space, Director of Music and Theatre Programs at The New School, Artistic Director of Town Hall, and Associate Director of Humanities at the 92nd Street Y. As Artistic Director of the European Mozart Academy, based in Poland, she presented concerts throughout Eastern Europe in 1996/97. She was visiting faculty at the National Academy of Music in Ghana in 1992/93. Kaminsky serves on the boards of Opera America and the Hermitage Artist Retreat.

Scores: Bill Holab Music.

Recordings: Affeto, Albany, Bridge, BSS, Cedille, CRI, Capstone, Mode, MSR, and Navona labels.  A complete list of available recordings can be viewed at the Buy CDs page. Kaminsky is a BMI composer.

Grants and Awards

For Composing:

• BRIO (Bronx Arts Council Artist Award), 2019
• Composers Now Visionary Award, 2019
• William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 50 Arts Commissions (for Today It Rains; Opera Parallèle), 2017
• Opera For All Voices Commissioning Grant (for Postville; Santa Fe and San Francisco Operas, leading a consortium including Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Minnesota Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Sarasota Opera, and Seattle Opera), 2017
• Opera America Commissioning Grant (for Today It Rains; Opera Parallèle), 2017
• Opera America Commissioning Grant (for Some Light Emerges; Houston Grand Opera), 2016
• BRIO (Bronx Arts Council Artist Award), 2016
• Camargo Foundation Fellowship (Cassis, France), 2016
• Opera America Development Grant (for Today It Rains), 2015
• 50 for 50 Arts Westchester Artist Award, 2015
• Nominated for an American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award, 2015
• UUP Faculty Support Award, 2015
• Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (As One), 2014
• National Endowment for the Arts (As One), 2014
• Opera America Discovery Grant (As One), 2014
• Purchase College Faculty Development Award, 2014
• BRIO (Bronx Arts Council Artist Award), 2014
• BAM/Kennedy Center DeVos Institute Fellowship Award (for As One), 2013
• Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (Rising Tide; Fry Street Quartet), 2013
• New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship: Commission, 2013
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 2012
• Hermitage Artist Retreat Center Residency Fellowship, 2012-2014
• Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (Piano Concerto for Ursula Oppens and the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic), 2011
• Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress Commissioning Award, 2011
• Centrum Artist Residency Fellowship, Port Townsend, WA, 2011
• Meet the Composer Met Life Creative Connections Residency Grant, 2011
• Faculty Support Award, Purchase College, 2011
• Seal Bay Chamber Music Festival Composer-in-Residence Fellowship, 2011
• Meet the Composer Met Life Creative Connections Residency Grant, 2010
• Musical Chairs Chamber Ensemble Residency, Staten Island, NY, 2010-2011
• Lucy Moses School of Music Chamber Music Commission, 2010-11
• Dorland Mountain Artists Colony Residency Fellowship, 2010
• New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Commission, 2010
• Hermitage Artist Retreat Center Residency Fellowship, 2009-2011
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 2009-2010
• Copying Assistance Program Grant/American Music Center, 2009
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 2009
• Meet the Composer Met Life Creative Connections Residency Grant, 2009
• Kenan Institute for the Arts Commission, 2009
• Lucy Moses School of Music, Kaufmann Cultural Center and Women’s Work Music Co-Commission, 2008
• Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize (“Terra Terribilis: Concerto for Three Percussionists and Orchestra”), 2008
• Centrum Artist Residency Fellowship, Port Townsend, WA, 2008
• Lucy Moses School of Music Chamber Music Commission, 2007-2008
• Purchase College Professional Development Award, 2007
• Centrum Artist Residency Fellowship, Port Townsend, WA, 2007
• Lucy Moses School of Music Chamber Music Commission, 2006-2007
• Purchase College Professional Development Award, 2007
• Centrum Artist Residency Fellowship, Port Townsend, WA, 2007
• Lucy Moses School of Music Chamber Music Commission, 2006-2007
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 2006
• CEC ArtsLink Projects Award, 2006
• National Endowment for the Arts commission, 2005
• North Carolina Arts Council Grant, 2004
• Centrum Artist Residency Fellowship, Port Townsend, WA, 2004
• Jordan Foundation Commissioning Grant, 2003
• Icicle Creek Music Center Visiting Composer Residency, Leavenworth, WA, 2003
• Cornish College of the Arts Professional Development Award, 1999-2004
• Artist Trust GAP Grant, 2002
• Jory Copying Assistance Program Grant/American Music Center, 2001
• American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters: nominated for composer award (Joan Tower), 2001
• Seattle Arts Commission Performing Artists Award, 2001
• King County Arts Council Special Projects Grant [through Odeon String Quartet], 2001
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 1999
• Serage Foundation Artist Grant, 1998
• National Endowment for the Arts Recording Grant [through Musicians Accord], 1995
• Meet the Composer Grants, 1983-1997; 1999, 2000; 2002
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 1992
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 1991
• National Flute Association, Finalist, Newly Published Works Competition, 1991
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 1990
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 1989
• New York State Council on the Arts Recording Grant, 1987
• Millay Colony for the Arts Residency Fellowship, 1986
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency Fellowship, 1985
• Millay Colony for the Arts Residency Fellowship, 1984
• American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters: nominated for composer award (Miriam Gideon), 1986
• Panopticon/New York Women Composers Competition, 1986
• Composers’ Forum: New Music/New Composers Competition, 1985
• American Society for Jewish Music Competition, 1985
• American Women Composers National Competition, 1984
• Tuch Foundation Fellowship, 1978-80

For Presenting/Producing:

• Composers Now Visionary Award, 2019
• Polish Gold Cross of Merit (Zloty Krzyż Zasługi RP), awarded by the President of Poland for exemplary public service or humanitarian work, 2015
• Virgil Thomson Foundation Grant to support “Virgil Thomson and Friends at the Chelsea Hotel,” 2014
• ASCAP/Chamber Music America Adventurous Programming Award, 2013
• Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Grant to support “Harlem Resonance Festival, 2013
• AMEX Foundation Grant to produce “John Cage: How to Get Started,” 2012
• Florence Gould Foundation Grant to support “Gertrude’s Paris” Festival, 2012
• ASCAP/Chamber Music America Adventurous Programming Award, 2011
• Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage 2010 Chopin Award
• CEC ArtsLink Award to support Wall to Wall Behind the Wall: Music of the Soviet Era, 2010
• Trust for Mutual Understanding Grant to support Wall to Wall Behind the Wall: Music of the Soviet Era, 2010
• Likhachev/Russkiy Mir Foundation Cultural Fellowship to St. Petersburg, Russia, 2009
• NEA American Masterpieces for “The 1939 Project: American Arts at a Turning Point” at Symphony Space, 2008-09
• Wachovia Foundation for “Africa and the African Diaspora: Traditions, Revolutions and Innovations,” 2007-08
• Mellon Foundation for “Africa and the African Diaspora: Traditions, Revolutions and Innovations” New York Festival and Symposum, 2007-2008
• New York State Music Fund for “New Latin Music for New Audiences,” a part of “Africa and the African Diaspora: Traditions, Revolutions and Innovations,” 2006-2008
• Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming as Artistic Director of the Cornish Music Series, 2003
• Aaron Copland Fund for Music Supplemental Program Grants for “The Cornish Music Series” in 2003/04, 2002/03 and “Copland & Weill: A Centenary Celebration” in 2000
• Aaron Copland Fund for Music Performing Ensembles Grants for Musicians Accord, 1990-2002
• Jack Straw Productions Artist Support Grant as Director of Musicians Accord to record “The Brazil Project,” 2000
• Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming as Artistic Director of The Town Hall, NYC, First Prize, 1991
• Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming as Artistic Director of The Town Hall, NYC, First Prize, 1990
• Citation from the Office of the Manhattan Borough President for Service to New York as Artistic Director of The Town Hall, 1989
• Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming as Artistic Director of The Town Hall, Second Prize, 1989