These past months have been filled with nature, quality time with family and friends, and COMPOSING! In the coming year, you’ll get to hear the fruits of my labor given voice through:
Seattle Bach Choir (WA), Daniel A. Mahraun, director. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the choir with a new setting of the ‘Credo’ with a text by Martin Luther for SATB and organ accompaniment.
Women’s Voices Chorus (NC), Laura Justus Sam, director. Commissioned to be part of their spring concert theme of ‘home and away’ this piece promises to spark joy and challenge this amazing community of singers.
Red Wing High School Choir (MN), Scott Perau, director. A new a cappella piece for graduation with lyrics based on input directly from choir students.
Commissions are how composers like me make their living, and I’m grateful for the artistic leadership of each of these ensembles for engaging me in this way. If you’re interested in commissioning me to write a piece tailor-made for your ensemble, please reach out!
Thanks to the State Arts Board, I have been awarded the opportunity to put together a new project with dance choreographer Jennifer Ilse, visual artist Vicky Radel, and poet Athena Kildegaard to develop a process to create public art for and in rural Minnesota communities. The project will address emotional themes that feel particularly potent to us at this time, and that we see expressed in our communities of older women in our own urban and rural areas. I am eager to use our four genres in conversation with one another to explore emotional themes in a way that connects us and our increasingly polarized communities.
During our one-week intensive, each of us will choose one of four emotional themes (yearning, worry, anger, and tumult), and create a piece of art in our own genre. Over the course of the week, we will pass our art to others in our quartet and create a new work in response to what is handed to us. In this way we will end with four four-part cycles of work in four mediums. At the end of the week we will have a public presentation in a venue in Morris, MN.
I can’t wait to work with Jennifer, Athena, and Vicky on such a meaningful and rewarding project!
I’m excited to hear the premiere of my piece A Mighty Strength based on a text by St. Brigid of Gael sung by Angelus at Augustana, directed by Natalie Campbell. Learn more here, and I look forward to publishing this piece to make it available to all!
Join me and lead commissioner Angelica Cantanti Youth Choirs (ACYC), directed by Elizabeth Egger, in this consortium! A group of ACYC middle schoolers brainstormed ideas with me this summer. These wise young people want to tell a story surrounding the idea of “confusion.”
“The unknown is forever strange; the answers are never ordinary.”
In one package of $250, here’s what you’ll get:
Score (S(S)A and piano), medium difficulty, in PDF form emailed by January 5
Your name and institution in score as commission project participants
Teaching resources downloadable in Google Slides format including both musical teaching moments and social-emotional learning lessons
MP3s vocal practice tracks
MP3 accompaniment track
Live Zoom with me and Beth Egger (Date TBD) also viewable later on Youtube
All participants will be asked to sign a brief commissioning agreement. Reach out if you have any questions or want to join us!
I will be participating in the virtual ‘Inspired Choir Summer Summit’ along with many fellow composers July 24-26, and I hope that many of you can join me! This is a summit where you can learn from choral composers as they share their repertoire, inspirations, stories, and lessons. Learn more and reserve your free spot here.
On May 23, 2023, I will be releasing my first album and features all original songs that I’ve written over the years through commissions, my incredible experience as a part of the Nautilus Composer-Librettist workshop, and making music with dear colleagues. It started as a recording project during the height of the pandemic, when I saw many singers suddenly and devastatingly out of work. Choirs weren’t meeting. Concerts weren’t happening. Though I had the good fortune to be gainfully employed through my church, I still took a hit as my music sales, concerts, and premieres all dried up as well. Through help from grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and Ramsey County, I had the means to record many of my solo compositions that had been previously unrecorded.
This collection of songs is eclectic, and a good introduction to my range as a composer. Traditional art song (written to be sung in recital, typically with piano accompaniment and often set to a poem) is well represented, but I have also included pieces that would be comfortable in a jazz club, theater, or on stage. Most of the lyricists/poets have Minnesota connections, and I have been honored to have collaborated with many of them. There is a wealth of talent here in the Twin Cities, and I sought out the best and the brightest to make my music shine.
Poets and Lyricists
Athena Kildegaard and the recently departed Louis Jenkins each have a song cycle highlighted on the album. The five writers that participated in the Composer-Librettist studio with Linda, Alan Berks, Jeremiah Gamble, Alayna Jacqueline, Katie Ka Vang, and Kathleen Tucker are also represented along with Arthur Upson, Marjorie Pickthall, and Lola Ridge.
Singers and Collaborative Pianists
Laurel Armstrong, Gary Briggle, Corissa Bussian, Daniel Greco, Roy Heilman, Georgia Jacobson, Maria Jette, Linh Kauffman, Clara Osowski, and KrisAnne Weiss, singers. Jill Dawe, Mary Jo Gothmann, Kathy Kraulik, Carson Rose Schneider, and Sonja Thompson, collaborative pianists.
Join me in celebrating on May 23rd! Click HERE to reserve your spot and HERE to RSVP via Facebook.
On and after May 23, ‘Harsh Things to Beauty’ can be found on all major streaming platforms, BandCamp, and here on my website.
I’m looking forward to showcasing my work alongside my colleague Catherine Dalton at the national ACDA conference in Cincinnati. If you plan to attend the conference, I would love to see you there!
A bit about the showcase: Are lyrics at the heart of your programming? Listen, read along, and discover insights that will fuel your upcoming music selections. Join us as we provide a glimpse into how we source and set meaningful texts in our distinctive compositions as you find new ways to engage your choirs and audiences! You will receive a QR code with access to all the scores and recordings in the session.
Wed, Feb 22, 4pm Duke Energy Convention Center, Rooms 260-262 Learn more here.
I’m honored to have been featured in Colleen McNickle’s blog Inspired Choir: “Sing In the New Year with We Toast The Days by Linda Kachelmeier.” Not only does it feature a piece close to my heart, it also presents a composer feature, discussion guides, and teacher resources!
For the last decade, Colleen has been teaching music to students of all ages. She created Inspired Choir in an effort to boost her own practice as a choir teacher and share her work with others. You can learn more about Inspired Choir and Colleen here.
Visit the blog post here, and stay on to take in other wonderful features of fellow composers!
About We Toast the Days:
Originally written to be sung at midnight on New Year’s Eve with friends and family as a new kind of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, this piece grew into a full-fledged choral piece. From quartets to large choirs, it has been performed by community choirs, high schools, and professional groups such as Lumina, Lorelei, and this winter, Cantus. Available Voicings: SSAA, SATB, and TTBB.
You know what’s great? Working with amazing colleagues like Beth Egger and fantastic choirs like Angelica Cantanti. I had a wonderful night workshopping my piece I Am Becoming as the choir prepared for their upcoming ACDA performance. The focus, fun, and connection to the song was so moving.
The Angelica Cantanti Youth Choirs is an award winning Twin Cities’ children’s choir program dedicated to providing high quality choral music education with excellence in performance. ACYC’s conductors are professional music educators and artists who nurture and challenge the 275 boy and girl singers in grades K – 12. Young singers come from across the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area to weekly rehearsals at the Bloomington Center for the Arts.
I Give Voice to My Mother, my song cycle in six movements based on poems by Athena Kildegaard from her book “Course” was performed at Source Song Festival the other week, and I was honored to see it mentioned in the Star Tribune’s review of the festival’s opening night performance. You can read the full review here.
It was quite special to have multiple singers share a song cycle: Clara Osowski and KrisAnne Weiss, mezzo-sopranos Maria Jette and Tracey Engelman, sopranos with Mary Jo Gothmann, piano
Linda Kachelmeier’s “I Give Voice to My Mother” was the highlight of the evening, as four singers traded songs that the composer had created from Kildegaard’s poetry. Opening and closing with soft, simple benedictions from festival co-founder Clara Osowski — whose voice I would have loved to have heard more — the cycle was at its most touching on soprano Maria Jette’s interpretation of “A Healing” and Weiss’ chronicle of a mother’s death, “Cadence.”
Rob Hubbard, Star Tribune
Photo: Source Song Festival Founder and Singer, Clara Osowski (left) and composer Linda Kachelmeier (right)
