Janika Vandervelde

1955

Ripon, Fond du Lac County, United States of America

Known for her music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles and the stage, she also teaches composition. She began composing in her teens. She has taught intermittently at the University of Minnesota School of Music, and teaches regularly at Hamline University and at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, a residential high school for the arts in Golden Valley, Minnesota. Vandervelde is the author of Music by Kids for Kids, a composition curriculum designed for computer labs equipped with MIDI keyboards, published by the American Composers Forum. Vandervelde"s music has been warmly received. She has been called "a passionate experimenter and ingenious explorer of new sonorities" and "a composer whose style reflects a freely inquisitive artistic personality." Most notably, the feminist musicologist Susan McClary argued that Vandervelde"s piano trio "Genesis II moves metaphorically through a series of natural, cultural, and historical worldviews, holding them in tension and contradiction." McClary also argued that "Vandervelde"s use of a rhythmically insistent but harmonically ambiguous academic minimalism female embodiment and pleasure." McClary"s feminist readings of Vandervelde"s work, along with her readings of other composers, ignited a debate in musical criticism and scholarship. Genesis II (premiered and recorded by the Mirecourt Trio) is discussed at length in Take Note, an undergraduate music-appreciation textbook by musicologist Robin Wallace, published in 2014 by Oxford University Press. The work is part of the book"s "core repertory.".

Janika Vandervelde

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composer music educator pianist

Background

Janika Vandervelde was born in Ripon, Wisconsin, and grew up in nearby Green Lake, playing horn and piano.

Education

University of Minnesota.

Career

Known for her music for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensembles and the stage, she also teaches composition. She began composing in her teens. She has taught intermittently at the University of Minnesota School of Music, and teaches regularly at Hamline University and at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, a residential high school for the arts in Golden Valley, Minnesota.

Vandervelde is the author of Music by Kids for Kids, a composition curriculum designed for computer labs equipped with MIDI keyboards, published by the American Composers Forum.

Vandervelde"s music has been warmly received. She has been called "a passionate experimenter and ingenious explorer of new sonorities" and "a composer whose style reflects a freely inquisitive artistic personality." Most notably, the feminist musicologist Susan McClary argued that Vandervelde"s piano trio "Genesis II moves metaphorically through a series of natural, cultural, and historical worldviews, holding them in tension and contradiction." McClary also argued that "Vandervelde"s use of a rhythmically insistent but harmonically ambiguous academic minimalism female embodiment and pleasure." McClary"s feminist readings of Vandervelde"s work, along with her readings of other composers, ignited a debate in musical criticism and scholarship.

Genesis II (premiered and recorded by the Mirecourt Trio) is discussed at length in Take Note, an undergraduate music-appreciation textbook by musicologist Robin Wallace, published in 2014 by Oxford University Press. The work is part of the book"s "core repertory.".

Achievements

Vandervelde has won numerous awards for her work as a composer, including multiple Bush Artist Fellowships and McKnight Foundation Composer Fellowships. She is also a recipient of the Lili Boulanger Award from The Women"s Philharmonic of San Francisco.

Connections

teacher:: Dominick Argento

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Janika Vandervelde

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Awards

Vandervelde has won numerous awards for her work as a composer, including multiple Bush Artist Fellowships and McKnight Foundation Composer Fellowships. She is also a recipient of the Lili Boulanger Award from The Women's Philharmonic of San Francisco.