Janika Vandervelde

Janika Vandervelde photo courtesy Meet The Composer

Janika Vandervelde will begin a residency with the Minnesota Chorale, a 200-voice choir made up of 30 to 40 contracted singers and 160 avocational singers, which serves as the primary symphonic chorus for the Minnesota Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Ms. Vandervelde's residency will also involve the Minnesota Center for Arts Education, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota. With the assistance of these organizations, Ms. Vandervelde will work with children at local schools on performance and improvisation, instruct over 120 young people, and create and present new works reflecting the spirit and heritage of the state's various communities.

The residency will culminate with a large interdisciplinary performance piece to be premiered at a major Minneapolis performing arts venue. This composition will feature stories collected by the Women's International League as part of their "Sharing Stories, Creating Hope" project. A puppet and mask theater production, incorporating music and dance elements will bring to life stories of local girls and women from diverse cultural backgrounds, some of whom have experienced and overcome physical and mental abuses. The new work will be choreographed by students and instructors from the dance program at the Minnesota Center for Arts Education and feature student and professional instrumentalists, including pipa virtuoso Gao Hong.

Janika Vandervelde, a native of Wisconsin, has written more than 60 works for orchestras, choirs, chamber ensembles, soloists, and the stage, including the operas Hildegard (1989) and Seven Sevens (1993). She has also received more than 20 commissions from such organizations as the Minnesota Orchestra, the Guthrie Theater, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Minnesota, where her teachers included Eric Stokes and Dominick Argento, and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Lili Boulanger Award and the Composers Commissioning Award. Ms. Vandervelde has worked as a guest composer with several major orchestras, as a guest composer/lecturer at various colleges and universities, and has extensive community and educational experience. For five years she produced and directed student-generated concerts of new music at the Walker Art Center and has taught such interdisciplinary courses at the Minnesota Center for Arts Education as The Sexual Politics of Rock, The Gamelan Project, Music and Censorship, Women's Voices.