Emily Doolittle

Emily Lenore Doolittle (born 16 October 1972) is a Canadian composer.,[1] zoomusicologist and Athenaeum Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland[2] based in Glasgow, Scotland.

Her music, frequently inspired by folklore and the natural world has been commissioned and performed around the world. She is a member of the Scottish Music Centre[3] and the Canadian Music Centre.[4]

Life and work

Emily grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She studied at Dalhousie University (with Dennis Farrell and Steve Tittle), the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, (where she studied with Louis Andriessen with the support of a Fulbright Fellowship), Indiana University (where she studied with Don Freund) and Princeton University (where she studied with Steve Mackey, Barbara White, Paul Lansky, Paul Koonce, and Peter Westergaard). From 2008 to 2015 she was an associate professor of music at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.[5]

Emily has an interest in zoomusicology (the study of animal and human song) and the natural world. She has explored this in a number of works, her doctoral dissertation at Princeton and as a part of interdisciplinary birdsong research conducted alongside biologists and ornithologists. Together with cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch, Bruno Gingras and Dominik Endres, she discovered that hermit thrush song follows the overtone series.[6]

Of the development of her passion for bird and animal song, she has said: "I was studying at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague when a bird woke me up one morning. It sounded like human music and aroused my interest in animal song."[7] Other predominant themes in her music include story-telling, music with and/or for children and folklore. Her chamber opera Jan Tait and the Bear was awarded a 2016 Opera America Discovery Grant[8] and was selected for performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of the 2018 Made in Scotland Showcase.[9]

Her work has received numerous awards, including the 2012 Theodore Front Prize[10] for A Short, Slow Life, two ASCAP Morton Gold Awards, the Joseph H. Bearns Prize, and the Sorel Organization Medallion in Recording.[11] She has been commissioned by such ensembles as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra,[12] Symphony Nova Scotia,[13] Orchestre Métropolitain,[14] the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony,[15] and Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal[16]

List of works

Chamber music
  • 7 Duos for Bird or Strings (violin and viola)
  • col (violin and marimba)
  • Falling still (string quartet)
  • Field Guide (string trio)
  • Folie à Deux (flute and harpsichord)
  • Four pieces about water (flute/piccolo, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trombone, piano, violin, cello and double bass)
  • migrations
  • night black bird song (two piccolos, three percussion)
  • Palouse Songbook (flute and piano)
  • REEDS (oboe, Bb clarinet, bassoon and dancer)
  • Sorex (a celebration of untamed shrews) (piano duet)
  • Suppose I was a marigold (cello and piano)
  • While the parrot repeats human words (narrator, clarinet, viola and percussion)
  • The Wise Daughter (narrator, violin and piano)
  • Woodwings (wind quintet)
  • Three Summer Pieces (flute duo)

Choral
  • Dàn nan Ròn (children's choir with flute and cello obligato)
  • Seal songs (narrator, children's choir and chamber ensemble)
  • Songs of Seals

Orchestral
  • Reedbird (for winds and brass)
  • A Short, Slow Life (for soprano and orchestra)
  • ...and some fireworks"
  • green/blue
  • Green notes
  • Sapling

Opera
  • Jan Tait and the Bear (chamber opera)

Solo
  • Aubade (solo flute)
  • Field Music (solo clarinet)
  • Gliese 581 c (solo piano)
  • Minute etudes (solo piano)
  • Minute etudes (book two) (solo piano)
  • Music for Magpies (viola da gamba)

Vocal
  • Airs of men long dead (mezzo soprano and piano)
  • All spring (soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, bass and percussion)
  • Body of Wood (soprano, Bohlen-Pierce clarinet, cello and percussion)
  • Child's play (soprano and piano)
  • Hammarskjold songs (soprano and piano)
  • Ruby-Throated Moment (solo high soprano)
  • A short, slow life (soprano and orchestra - version with soprano and 10 instruments also available)
  • Social sounds from whales at night (soprano and tape)
  • Virelais (soprano and solo bowed instrument)

Recordings

all spring - CD of chamber music performed by the Seattle Chamber Players and friends - comcon0025 7/15

References
  1. "Emily Doolittle: Showcase | Canadian Music Centre | Centre de Musique Canadienne". www.musiccentre.ca. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  2. "Emily Doolittle - Royal Conservatoire of Scotland research and professional practice gateway". pure.rcs.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  3. "Emily Doolittle". www.scottishmusiccentre.com. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  4. "Emily Doolittle". www.musiccentre.ca. Retrieved 2018-09-26.
  5. Von Glahn, Denise (2013). Music and the Skillful Listener. Indiana University Press. pp. 299–302.
  6. "Overtone-based pitch selection in hermit thrush song: Unexpected convergence with scale construction in human music (PNAS)". pnas.org. Retrieved 2018-10-14.
  7. Greenaway, Heather (2017-06-21). "'Real life Doctor Dolittle' sings to seals and turns their howls into music". dailyrecord. Retrieved 2018-09-02.
  8. "Opera America Announces Recipients of Opera Grants for Female Composers". Retrieved 2018-09-26.
  9. "Jan Tait and the Bear | Made in Scotland". Retrieved 2018-09-29.
  10. "Emily Doolittle wins Theodore Front Prize for "A short slow life"". 2012-07-03.
  11. "Medallion in Recording". Retrieved 2018-09-29.
  12. "Big names, new works, and a few Dutch treats on Otto Tausk's first and VSO's 100th season". 2018-02-15.
  13. "Celebrating Elizabeth Bishop: Symphony Nova Scotia and soprano Suzie LeBlanc perform new music as part of EB100 Festival, Feb 2011".
  14. "Pop Culture : Le Conseil des arts de Montréal a 50 ans, Marche et cours contre le cancer, Consommer équitable, Geneviève Guérard".
  15. "First Music Winners 1984-present". Retrieved 2018-09-29.
  16. "Compositeurs des éditions précédentes". Retrieved 2018-09-29.
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