COMPOSER SHOWCASE

Juliet Kiri Palmer

New Zealand-Canadian composer Juliet Palmer is known as a “post-modernist with a conscience” (The Listener) whose work “crosses so many genres as to be in a category of its own” (Toronto Star). Juliet is the artistic director of Urbanvessel, a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration. Recent works: rivers, solo CD release (Barnyard Records, 2018); Inside Us, audio-video installation and performance (Western Front, Vancouver); burl for pianist Stephen De Pledge (NZ Festival); The Man Who Married Himself, librettist Anna Chatterton & choreographer Hari Krishnan (Toronto Masque Theatre); Vermillion Songs, tenor Simon O’Neill & NZTrio; and Sweat, a cappella opera, writer Anna Chatterton (CalArts, Los Angeles; Bicycle Opera tour; National Sawdust, New York). Her 2010 boxing opera Voice-Box was acclaimed as a “performance piece that smashes the boundaries between disciplines and leaves them sprawled out on the mat, down for the count” (Musicworks).

Upcoming: Oil & Water, Detroit Symphony Orchestra (June 2019); small excesses, for pianist Sarah Watkins and violinist Andrew Beer (Atoll CD release); Cutwork, Auckland Chamber Orchestra (October, 2019); Choreography of Trauma, Continuum and The Element Choir (2020); and a commissioned work for Canada’s Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra with New Zealand conductor Gemma New (2020).

Juliet was the 2011/12 Creative New Zealand/Jack C. Richards composer-in-residence at the New Zealand School of Music and the 2012 composer-in-residence of Orchestra Wellington. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Sunnybrook Research Institute in 2018 funded by the Ontario Arts Council. She is the winner of the Detroit Symphony’s Elaine Lebenbom Award and the recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship 2018-19.

Juliet holds a PhD in composition from Princeton University and an M.Mus in performance, composition and time-based art from Auckland University.