Clare Glackin is a composer of instrumental and vocal concert works who writes music inspired by place and setting, language and the linguistic properties of melody, and the full spectrum of human experiences and emotions, including transformation, loss, humor, nostalgia, wonder, and profound joy. Her work has been commissioned and performed by groups such as the Houston Grand Opera and Culver City Symphony, and she has been a composer fellow at music festivals and workshops including the Aspen Music Festival, Mizzou International Composers Festival, University of Nebraska Chamber Music Institute, and the Wyoming Festival. Ms. Glackin’s newest orchestra piece, Archaea, loosely inspired by Irish folk music, is a finalist for the American Prize in orchestral composition, and will be featured on Minnesota Orchestra’s “Music Makers” concert as part of their Composers’ Institute in January 2020.
Ms. Glackin loves working personally with the musicians who play her work, and has collaborated with some of the most exciting young new music performers on the scene. Recent projects include a violin encore written for violinist Giancarlo Latta and pianist Wesley Ducote as part of their “16x16: The Rice Encores Project,” an oboe concerto written for Rachel Van Amburgh and premiered by Ms. Van Amburgh and the USC Thornton Symphony, and a setting of text excerpted from Stravinsky’s lecture series “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons” written for soprano Ally Smither. She seeks to craft music that is engaging and fulfilling for performers, and is always looking for new collaborators.
Also an oboist, Ms. Glackin has performed in premieres of various student compositions, as well as with the USC Concert Orchestra and Rice Campanile. She especially enjoys writing for woodwinds.
Ms. Glackin started composing at the age of eight under the guidance and encouragement of her first teacher; composer and jazz pianist Sherry Dufka. A native of Mount Vernon, Washington, she holds degrees from the University of Southern California, where she was named a Discovery Scholar and Outstanding Graduate of the composition program, and Rice University, where she attended on a Brown Fellowship. Her teachers have included composers Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Pierre Jalbert, and Richard Lavenda.
