Sarah Kirkland Snider: Composing Against the Grain

Jennifer Williams interviews composer Sarah Kirkland Snider. Deemed “one of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers” (Pitchfork), “a potentially significant voice on the American music landscape” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and “an important representative of 21st century trends in composition” (New York Classical Review), she has received commissions and performances from the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and the National Symphony Orchestra, among many others. We discuss her reimagining of mythology in her recent work, Penelope, her inter-genre music – and how the artistic impulses the classical world tells you to repress might just be the very inspiration that defines your unique and important work.