START, Elizabeth

  Elizabeth Start is a composer, cellist, arts administrator, and union officer, currently dividing her time between Kalamazoo MI and the Chicago area. In Michigan, she is a cellist with the Kalamazoo Symphony, Executive Director of the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music (a 501(c)(3) arts organization), and Secretary/Treasurer of the Kalamazoo Federation of Musicians, Local 228, AFM. Her work “Traces” was commissioned by the Kalamazoo Symphony for their 100th anniversary season. In Illinois. she is a cellist with the Elgin Symphony, and a member of the Chicago Composers’ Consortium and Chicago Musicians Club of Women. She is also a member of the International Alliance of Women in music and has provided CD reviews for their journal. Her work “Echoes in Life” appears on Thomas Mesa’s CD “Division of Memory”, which won bronze at the 2022 Global Music Awards.

As a performer, she has premiered over 100 works. As a composer, she has received numerous grants and commissions and over 500 performances of over 140 works in the U.S. and abroad. While living in Chicago, she performed with Ralph Shapey’s Contemporary Chamber Players, on chamber concerts of new music at Orchestra Hall with members of the CSO, for American Women Composers, CUBE, and New Music Chicago. She has taught cello, acoustics, composition, music history and theory, world music, music appreciation and basic mathematics at institutions including Columbia College, Depaul University, Elgin Suzuki, and Kalamazoo College. Her education includes a B.A in mathematics and B.Mus in cello from Oberlin College and Conservatory, master’s degrees in cello and theory/composition from Northern Illinois University, and a PhD in composition from the University of Chicago …kudos to the Chicago Youth Concert Orchestra …and conductor Terrance Gray for opening the program with Elizabeth Start’s engaging Buoyancy. The work is a bustle of rhythmic energy, tightly assembled,… Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, May 18, 2004 ...Unsupervised…performed music by members of the Chicago Composers’ Consortium. Three of these five works stuck out as some of the finest music of the day. One was Elizabeth Start’s O, Aedificatio, O Vita, which received its world premiere. This…music is attractive and shapely… Start uses a lot of “effects”… But they don’t feel like gimmicks and are well integrated into the structure of the music—justified by what seems to be being expressed at any given moment.

John Y. Lawrence, Chicago Classical Review “Ear Taxi goes back to the future for festival finale” Oct 05, 2021,12:40 pm

Recent works include: Together 360 for flute, 2 clarinets, alto sax, trumpet, trombone, bass trombone, piano, 1 percussion, violin, viola cello (2022), written for Durward Ensemble and Chicago Composers’ Consortium May 15, 2022 concert. O, Aedificatio for 10 (aka O, Aedificatio, aka O Aedificatio, O Vita) (2021) for flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion, harp, violin, viola, cello, bass; written for Unsupervised (expansion of the 2020 quartet version) (8 minutes) Stetson Chapel Bells for soprano and 3 cellos (2021), text by Conrad Hilberry, commissioned for the Connecting Chords Music Festival “Music in Place” project (5 minutes) Uncertain Futures for three women’s voices (2021), settings of poems by Conrad Hilberry, written for Artemisia, to be premiered on a Chicago Composers’ Consortium streamed concert on April 30, 2021. (8 minutes) Salt Bowl for electric cello with wah, flanger and digital delay (2020), based on a sculpture by Maria Scott, commissioned by the Connecting Chords Music Festival (2 minutes) Hoku for cello (2020), based on a sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, commissioned by the Connecting Chords Music Festival (2 minutes) O, Aedificatio, based on a Hildegard fragment (2020) for clarinet, violin, viola, and cello (6 minutes) Conclusions for string quartet (2020), written for Spektral Quartet and the Chicago Composers’ Consortium (5 minutes) Celestial Swim, a soundtrack for an imaginary drift in outer space (2020) for orchestra (2+222 4231 T+1 str) written for the Elgin Symphony Orchestra Concerts for Youth (5 minutes) April in New Orleans in April (2019) for solo cello, written for Frank and April Smith, winners of the 2019 Elgin Symphony Orchestra Fundraiser silent auction for a personalized composition (5 minutes) Traces (2019) Inspired by Strong Women for orchestra (222 2231 T+2 str), commissioned by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra for its 100th Anniversary Celebratory ‘2020-2021’ Concert Season (10 minutes).