Kurt Rohde, photo by Jeanette Yu.

The music of composer and violist Kurt Rohde has been described as being “filled with exhilaration and dread. It’s a mirror of our times, It’s dark music, lit up by peckings, clackings, snaps and slides. It sounds eerie, but lyrical; sustained, but skittish; free-form, yet dancing.” (San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin.)

Violist and composer Kurt Rohde is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is the winner of the 2012 Lydian String Quartet Commission Prize. He has received commission awards from New Music USA – Commissioning Music/USA, the NEA, and the Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations. Mr. Rohde recently completed new works for the Lydian String Quartet, eighth blackbird, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Scharoun Ensemble, pianist Genevieve Lee, and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. He is currently working on a new work work for the ZOFO Duet, and an opera with writer Dana Spiotta and artist David Humphrey. Mr. Rohde is also collaborating on a number of film projects with artist and filmmaker Shelley Jordon. His 2012 CD, ONE – chamber music of Kurt Rohde, was released by Innova Recordings, and his 2005 CD, Oculus – music for strings with the New Century Chamber Orchestra, was released on the Mondovibe label.

Kurt Rohde is Professor of Music Composition and Theory at the University of California at Davis Department of Music, where he is co-director of the Empyrean Ensemble. Kurt is a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and The New Century Chamber Orchestra. He will be a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2012–13.

Mr. Rohde is a graduate of the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the Curtis Institute of Music and SUNY Stony Brook. He studied composition with Donald Erb, Ned Rorem and Andrew Imbrie, and viola with Karen Tuttle, John Graham, and Caroline Levine. He has attended the Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and has participated as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and the Wellesley Composer Conference. Kurt Rohde lives in San Francisco with his partner Timothy Allen and their labradoodle Ripley.