Susan Kander

Miranda’s Waltz

Miranda’s Waltz is a delightful celebration of music writen to pique the interest of young audiences. In composer Susan Kander’s own words:

From the very beginning, my choice for Miranda’s Waltz was not to write an introduction to the instruments or even the families of the orchestra, since we have several magnificent and enduring works that do that: Peter and the Wolf, Carnival of the Animals, A Young Person’s Guide. I chose, rather, to explore the orchestra as a whole in all its thrilling and theatrical flexibility and color. Also, I want to present The Orchestra to kids the way I see it: as the greatest team sport I know of. “Who’s on first?” is small beans compared with “where’s that sound coming from?” and “will every single player play at the right time and not in the wrong place?’ and “if the four French horn players don’t play as one person, will the Warm Safe Hiding Place music accidentally turn into Silly Popcorn music?” – something easily done if players don’t play as a team.

Additionally, I want to celebrate and introduce to young people the specific sounds and styles that America has given to the world in the last century or so. My sources and inspirations range from Charles Ives to Duke Ellington to Loony Tunes to contemporary Big Band to John Adams to American musical theater: styles of music that children (and big people!) will hear throughout their lives and which are uniquely American contributions to world music. Lastly, I wanted Music – with a capital M – to be the point of the piece, not just its medium. Mary Hall Surface provided that exquisitely in her story. Miranda herself is the antithesis of that famous wolf-bagger Peter: she is small, doubtful, uninterested in the larger world when we meet her. She goes to her neighborhood park and meets something/someone that is even smaller than she is: a little brown mouse. Though this is not a talking mouse, and he has no name, he uses music to teach Miranda to open both her ears and her mind to the larger world around her. Because that’s what music does for me, every day.

Excerpts of Miranda’s Waltz can be found on Susan’s website.

About Susan Kander

Having graduated from Harvard University in 1979 with a degree in music and a passion for theater, Susan Kander spent the next 15 years working as a playwright for both theater and television before coming home to full time composition. Since then, she has been commissioned by a wide range of performers, ensembles, symphony orchestras and opera companies resulting in a growing catalog of works characterized by a vivid, often chromatic tonal presence, dramatic vocal writing and intensely rhythmic vibrancy. Her instrumental commissions span the spectrum from solo works for violin, viola, oboe and bassoon to a “symphonic adventure” for the Kennedy Center’s National Symphony Orchestra. These have been performed across the United States and beyond including London, Birmingham, Paris, Provence, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Her operas have been produced by opera companies, conservatories, colleges and schools all over this country and as far away as Capetown and Guanzhou. Her most recent opera commission, an adaptation of the seminal young adult novel The Giver by Lois Lowry, was jointly commissioned by Minnesota Opera and Lyric Opera of Kansas City and premiered in 2012. A “remarkable new work... In a particularly clever stroke, Kander briskly handles the novel’s expository details and narrative movement by means of a Greek-style chorus; her instrumental scoring is atmospheric and unobtrusive... But the vocals take priority... This adaptation is a sophisticated and subtle work, in terms of both music and story. Like Lowry’s novel, it never panders.” (Knight Arts, St. Paul) Tulsa Opera will be presenting The Giver in January, 2015.

A deep commitment to music for young audiences and family programming has led to commissions for a variety of works. Miranda’s Waltz, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra for actor/narrator and large orchestra, text by Mary Hall Surface, explores the orchestra as a whole in all its thrilling flexibility and color, and pays homage to specifically American 20th century styles and stylists including jazz, big band, Charles Ives, John Adams and Richard Rodgers. Two Tricky Tales, commissioned by the Southampton Chamber Music Festival for narrator and chamber ensemble, features the kind of exciting instrument doubling routinely found in a Broadway pit but rarely showcased in the classical world. The Donkey, the Goat and the Little Dog, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra for the Kennedy String Quartet, is described by Kander as the “first all-talking, all-acting, in-motion string quartet.” The Washington Post called it “a friendly, pain-free and often hilarious introduction to the string quartet for the 4-and-older crowd... hugely enjoyable.” And You and I, a choral work commissioned to accompany the opera Brundibàr, is a setting of a poem by a child interned at Térézin; Kander’s original manuscript for the piece resides, by request, in the Jewish Museum in Prague.

Kander is nationally recognized as a leading composer in the field of youth opera. Her most-produced work, One False Move, “an anatomization of girl bullying,” has been done by opera companies, conservatories, schools, colleges and choruses all over this country and in South Africa and China. It has been found to be a highly effective tool in generating discussion among both teens and adults about bullying. “The disquieting story line hit home with the largely underage audience, as did the multi-layered melodies and the pitch-perfect harmonies.” (The Weekly Pitch – Best of Kansas City annual awards listing)

Kander’s current project is the libretto and score for The News from Poems, a three-act opera about New Jersey poet/doctor William Carlos Williams. Act One was given a staged reading in New York by the Center for Contemporary Opera in November 2013. Her most recently completed commission, Hermestänze for violin and piano, premiered at the Yale School of Music in January 2014. Her orchestral, chamber, vocal and choral works are published by Subito Music. Her opera catalogue is published by Loose Cans Music and distributed by Subito. Kander lives in New York with her husband, architect Warren Ashworth and they have two sons.