Susan Kander received her B.A. in music at Harvard University in 1979 and then worked as a playwright until the mid-1990s. When she discovered her true passion, she began composing music that has since been performed throughout the United States and around the world. She received numerous commissions from notable ensembles, organizations, and famous instrumentalists to write everything from operas to chamber orchestral compositions. These commissions resulted in numerous famous works such as The News from Poems (2011), The Giver (2012), She Never Lost a Passenger (2015), and more. Her work, Miranda’s Waltz, received its Australian premiere in May 2017 and was live-streamed worldwide by the Australian Discovery Orchestra.
In 2015, Kander decided to attend graduate school. She studied with Du Yun and Huang Ruo at Purchase Conservatory, earning her M.M. in composition in 2017. Those two years produced a bouquet of new works for both orchestra and chamber ensemble that can be found on modern music outlets such as Soundcloud and Youtube. She is a Fellow of MacDowell and her music has been recorded on the MSR, Navona, and Loose Cans labels.
