Noteworthy
- If you'd like to get in touch, please contact me at tawnie dot olson at gmail dot com.
- Kristan Toczko, who took the photographs of me featured on this site, is also a gifted harpist.
- Very grateful to Luna Pearl Woolf and Kristin Hoff for organizing an incredible Opera Creation Forum in Montreal. It was such an honour and a pleasure to participate!
- Looking forward to writing a new piece for Chor Leoni as a finalist in their 2024 C/4 Canadian Choral Composition Competition!
- Very happy to have had the opportunity to write a blog post about representations of Mary and my Magnificat for Oxford University Press.
- Honoured and delighted to be working alongside Leslie Uyeda and Jeffrey Ryan as a composer-mentor for musica intima’s novum musica emerging composers workshop!
- Excited to hear Sandbox Percussion’s workshop performance of “Jötunn,” from Rational People at their Virtual Gala on July 25!
- So grateful to the International Double Reed Society for awarding Rachael Elliott and me a commissioning grant. I can't wait to hear Rachael première Perfectly Logical at the IDRS Virtual Symposium on July 31!
- Honoured to learn that Sanctuary and Storm is a finalist in the 2020-2021 National Opera Association Chamber Opera Composition Competition! Sanctuary and Storm was co-commissioned by the Women Composers Festival of Hartford and the Canada Council for the Arts for re:Naissance Opera. UPDATE: We won! Can't wait to hear the ASU production at NOA's conference in Arizona in January, 2024.
- Pinching myself that the Yale Schola Cantorum and Elm City Girls Choir’s marvelous performance of my Magnificat is included in this new Hyperion CD! Very grateful to Karen Clute for commissioning the piece and to conductor David Hill for championing it.
- Honoured, excited, and intimidated to be a composer-in-residence at Copland House in 2020!
- It's not every day that my music is called "mesmerizing" and "refined." So, so grateful to Brian Bartoldus and the Handel Choir of Baltimore for their terrific première of the choral version of Incantation, and for this lovely review by Tim Smith.
- It was wonderful to be interviewed by Rebecca Evans about That's one small step..., a new piece for SATB, string quartet, and percussion co-commissioned by the Alexandria and Virginia Choral Societies. (And an honour to share the billing with Lori Laitman!)
- The Yale Band, conducted by Prof. Tom Duffy, were kind enough to read through Pop!, my new piece for band. You can listen (and follow along in the score) here.
- Honoured and grateful that Sanctuary and Storm was featured in the most recent issue of the National Opera Association's Sacred in Opera newslettter.
- I'm so, so excited to have the opportunity to compose a new work for the BYU Singers, The Crossing, and Seraphic Fire, thanks to the Barlow Endowment.
- BandQuest/Hal Leonard has just published Pop!, my popcorn-inspired piece for grade 3 band!
- Honoured to have my Spring and Fall: to a young child included on a gorgeous new CD of Canadian music released by the Chronos Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Jordan Van Biert.
- So grateful to the American Composers Forum for commissioning Pop!, my first-ever piece for middle school band. Equally grateful to Sue Oakley and the E.C. Adams grade 8 band for premiering the piece so beautifully today!
- Very happy to share that E.C. Schirmer has just published Three Songs on Poems by Lorri Neilsen Glenn.
- Honoured to be a recipient of a Connecticut Artist Fellowship this year!
- I'm thrilled to be the Composer-in-Residence of the 2018 Women Composers Festival of Hartford!
- Three Songs on Poems by Lorri Neilsen Glenn, my first song cycle, just won second place in the 2018 NATS Art Song Competition. So, so grateful to CASP for commissioning it, and to Magali and Olivier for singing and playing it so beautifully!
- The Canadian Art Song Project asked me to write a short blog post about composing the song cycle they commissioned from me. This is what I came up with.
- The Yale Schola Cantorum and Elm City Girls Choir, under the direction of David Hill, just recorded my Magnificat as part of an exciting new album of Schola commissions. More information to come!
- In spring 2017 soprano Ariadne Lih and pianist Miles Walter gave the American premiere of Three Songs on Poems by Lorri Neilsen Glenn. You can watch their beautiful performance of "Dusk" here.
- I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've ever been referred to as a "Woman of the Year" unironically. Very, very grateful to OPERA America for the opportunity to develop my new chamber opera for re:Naissance Opera.
- Ambitious young percussionist Stephen Downing has made a gorgeous video of my Meadowlark
- Not looking forward to starting my day at 5 am, but very excited nonetheless to study field recording at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in June, thanks to a Professional Development Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
- What to say when your music is included on the same episode as that of John Luther Adams, Björk, and Glen Kotche, and the host notices and correctly solves the anagrams hidden in your movement titles? So much gratitude...
- Ian Rosenbaum's Memory Palace (which includes his recording of my Meadowlark, for marimba and electronics) is a Q2 album of the week!
- I couldn't be happier about this review. Magali Simard-Galdès and Olivier Hébert-Bouchard deserve every word of it!
- I'm very happy to share that I've just signed a contract to publish O Inexpressible Mystery with E.C. Schirmer. Keep an eye out for it in their spring 2018 catalogue...
- I'm pleased to announce that Spring and Fall: to a young child was one of four works selected in the IAWM Annual Concert Call for Scores, and was performed on Oct. 22 by the UL Lafayette Chamber Choir, William Plummer, conductor. I recently signed a contract to publish Spring and Fall with Mark Foster, so the score will be available soon!
- I've just learned that the BBC Singers are recording my Scel lem duib and Chantez à l'Éternel for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. I'm thrilled to have such a phenomenal group sing my music!
- The latest edition of the ACWC/AFCC Journal is here! Lovely articles by Vivan Fung, Bekah Simms, Carol Ann Weaver, and more.
- Really, really excited to share that Ian David Rosenbaum has just recorded my Meadowlark, for marimba and electronics. He's releasing it on his debut solo album, Memory Palace, available on January 6, 2017 from VIA Records.
- The Hartford Women Composers Festival will present Stephanie Simpson's choreography to my Something to Say on March 10. I can't wait to see it! I feel honoured that the festival will also include a live performance of Le Revenant on Sunday, March 13, by Miguel Campinho and Amanda Kohl.
- I'm terrified and excited about my upcoming composition for Third Practice, and so grateful to New Music USA for supporting the project!
- I'm looking forward to participating in Iron Composer 2015 in September and grateful to have been selected as one of five finalists in the competition. UPDATE: I'm excited to share that, contrary to my own expectations, I won!
- I feel incredibly lucky to have been one of six composers selected to participate in the Soundstreams Emerging Composers Workshop with Kaija Saariaho and Jean-Baptiste Barrière. As part of the workshop my piece American Robin, for soprano and electronics, was premièred at the 21C Festival by the incredible Carla Huhtanen. Soundstreams' Lindsay Marshall also put together this interview with me ahead of the workshop.
- I am delighted to share that Paraclete was one of the works selected (out of over 250 submissions) for inclusion in Concorde's 2015 "Up Close With Music" Series. It was performed by Paul Roe in Ireland in January; a video of his excellent performance can be found here.
- I am excited to share that Shawn Mativetsky has issued a digital release of Something to Say, which I wrote for him back in January. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Equality Now.
- I'm thrilled that my new piece for tabla and electronics, Something to Say, has been included in I Care If You Listen's Fall 2014 Mixtape.
- I had a marvelous time at Avaloch Farm this summer, courtesy of Duo Novus (Kristan Toczko and Emily Belvedere), for whom I composed a new piece while in residence.
- I was thrilled to be a small part of a fantastic solo percussion recital given by Ian David Rosenbaum at the Phillips Collection. He deserved every word of the Washington Post's review.
- Excited and honoured that Shawn Mativetsky performed my Something to Say, for tabla, spoken word, and digital audio at a concert connected with this conference hosted by matralab.
- Dominick DiOrio and NOTUS: IU Contemporary Vocal Ensemble gave a presentation on "Thirty-Something: New Choral Music by Today's Hottest Young Composers" at the ACDA convention in Cincinnati on Feb. 27. I am honoured to be one of the composers included. UPDATE: the choir has since performed "Scel lem duib" at their spring concert in Auer Hall.
- My new piece, Scel lem duib, for chamber chorus and harp, has been selected for publication in the National Collegiate Choral Organization's choral music series. You can download the score (and an audio guide to pronunciation) here.
- I feel honoured to have been invited to write the November post for "Mouth-piece," the Janus Trio's composer blog.
- Parthenia has a YouTube channel! You can see and hear their much-praised performance of Kristin Norderval's "Nothing Proved" and watch their première of my own "Thorns," with bass-baritone Dashon Burton.
- I just completed a wonderful, productive residency at I-Park. It's a great place; I feel very fortunate to have been able to spend time there and I highly recommend it.
- In September I was invited to speak about my compositions as part of a conference on James MacMillan and the Musical Modes of Mary and the Cross at Notre Dame University. You can read a summary of my remarks here
- This is not the most recent blog post by my friend and former colleague Dennis DeSantis, but it's well worth reading. And re-reading. And sharing....
- Dashon Burton has been awarded second prize in the ARD music competition.
- Dark In The Song, with bassoonists Dana Jessen, Jeffry Lyman, and Maya Stone, has commissioned and premièred a new work by Michael Gordon.
- Colin Eatock, music critic for the Globe and Mail and the Houston Chronicle, has a new CD of his compositions on the Centrediscs label. The first track features a gorgeous, lyrical performance by clarinetist Peter Stoll.
- One of my favourite former teachers, Allan Bell, has been appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.
- Julia Davids has a new book out on vocal technique.
- The author of this blog post confuses correlation with causation, but makes some great points nonetheless.
- James Strecker interviews Stacie Dunlop.
- Hyperbole and a half has come up with a better pain scale.
- Jeremy Denk on the Goldberg Variations.
