“This was highly inventive music on every level; hugely enjoyable and deeply involving with a constant sense of surprise…”The Washington Post

Judith Shatin is a composer and sound artist whose musical practice engages our social, cultura, and physical environments. She draws on expanded instrumental palettes and a cornucopia of the sounding world, from workers and machines in a deep coal mine, to the calls of animals, the shuttle of a wooden loom, a lawnmower racing up the lawn. Timbral exploration as well as collaboration with musicians, artists and communities are central to her musical life. Her music reflects her multiple fascinations with literature and visual arts, with the sounding world, both natural and built; and with the social and communicative power of music. Recent projects include commissions from the Cassatt Quartet, the Peninsula Women’s Chorus and the Scottish Voices, as well as an orchestral consortium commission for Jefferson, In His Own Words for narrator and orchestra. Other recent works includeTower of the Eight Winds for violin and piano. The Washington Post said “…Tower of the Eight Winds, commissioned by the Library of Congress. …stood out for its acuity and engaging vivacity as music one would like to hear again.” Shatin’s music has been featured at festivals including the Aspen, BAM Next Wave, Grand Teton, Havana in Spring, Moscow Autumn, Seal Bay, Ukraine, Soundways (St. Petersburg) and West Cork. Orchestras that have presented her music include the Denver, Houston, Illinois, Knoxville, Minnesota, National and Richmond Symphonies.

It can be heard on numerous labels, annd has been commissioned by groups including the Ash Lawn Opera, Barlow Foundation, Core Ensemble, Garth Newel Chamber Players, Kronos Quartet, Music-at-LaGesse Foundation, the National Symphony, Hexagon Ensemble, Virginia Chamber Orchestra and Wintergreen Performing Arts. It is regularly performed by ensembles such as Dinosaur Annex, Da Capo Chamber Players, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, newEar, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.

Educated at Douglass College (AB, Phi Beta Kappa), The Juilliard School (MM) and Princeton University (PhD), Judith Shatin is currently William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music, which she founded at the University of Virginia in 1987. Long an advocate for her fellow composers, she has served on the boards of the American Composers Alliance, the League/ISCM, and the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM). She also served as President of American Women Composers, Inc. (1989-93). In demand as a master teacher, she has been featured at the BMI residency at Vanderbilt University, and as senior composer for the Wellesley Composers Conference.

Shatin has been honored with four National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, as well as awards from the American Music Center, Fromm Foundation, Meet the Composer, the New Jersey State Arts Council and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. A two-year retrospective of her music, and the commission for her evening-length folk oratorio, COAL, was sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners Program. She has held residencies at Bellagio (Italy), Brahmshaus (Germany), Stiftung Dr. Robert und Lina Thyll-Dürr, Casa Zia Lina (Italy), La Cité des Arts (France), Mishkan Amanim (Israel) and in the US at MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Shatin’s music is published by Arsis Press, C.F. Peters, Colla Voce, E.C. Schirmer, Hal Leonard and Wendigo Music. Her work is included in Women of Influence in Contemporary Music, Nine American Composers (Scarecrow Press, 2010).