Kurt Rohde’s music is "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)

“The music has an unconventional and otherworldly texture that is constantly shifting, coalescing, scattering and then reassembling itself as it flows along…a wonderful assemblage of musical sounds not often heard together, creating new textures and nuances that stimulate the imagination in unexpected ways.” (Sequenza 21, Paul Muller)

Musician Kurt Rohde plays viola, teaches and composes. Kurt lives in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land with spouse Tim Allen and their dog Hendrix. In addition to enjoying double IPAs, off-beat films, and long distant running, Kurt is Artistic Advisor with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Artistic Director of the Composers Conference, and teaches Music Composition and Theory at UC Davis. Rohde has received the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, fellowships from the Radcliffe-Harvard Institute for Advanced Study and Guggenheim Foundation, and awards from American Academy of Arts and Letters, Barlow, Fromm, Hanson, and Koussevitzky Foundations, New Music USA, Chamber Music America, and the NEA. Kurt is the 2024 recipient of a Koussevitzky Foundation Commission in Memory of Andrew W. Imbrie from The Library of Congress.

Kurt is fascinated with the codification of failure in current culture, and is trying to find ways to incorporate notions of failure and catastrophe into the way he makes work in the pursuit of making something beautiful.

Upcoming projects are with Brightwork, ekmeles, cellist Michelle Kesler, Shamisen player Hidejiro Honjoh, percussionist Josh Perry, and duoJalal.

Kurt’s new work for the Lydian String Quartet, seeking all that’s still unsung, commissioned by a 2021 Chamber Music America Classical Commission Award, was premiered in April 2024. Recent projects include new works for the Curtis Institute of Music and bass trombonist Blair Bollinger (gyre…tone for bass trombone and electronics), and the Grossman Ensemble (the hardest folksongs never written). A recipient of a 2021 Creative Capital Award, Kurt completed a collaborative project in September 2023 with artist Marie Lorenz and writer Dana Spiotta: Newtown Odyssey, is a floating opera for, about and on the Newtown Creek. Rohde is a recipient of a 2022 NEA grant for Newtown Odyssey, a 2021 NEA grant with Left Coast Chamber Ensemble for the micro-opera 4:30 Movie based on the collection of the same name by poet Donna Masini. Rohde has collaborated with artist Shelley Jordon on their highly successful installation work [Lost] In The Woods. Other collaborations include working with artists David Humphrey & Jennifer Coates. Kurt’s CD of songs using texts by poets Scott Hunter and Diane Seuss, It wasn’t a dream… , was released on Albany Records in Spring 2020.

Kurt has spearheaded initiatives to help create opportunities for composers: Pathways provides gifted young composers without access to skills-based, respectful instruction and performance opportunities, fully-funded engagement in a long-term intensive student/mentor/performer workshop; The Commission Fund is a commission project supporting composers at different stages of their creative life; The Farewell Tour Project – PARTS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 targets underappreciated creative voices in the new music community.

REQUEST: Should you wish to play my work, I ask you include it on a program that is representative & includes a number of pieces by BIPOC and/or female and non-binary identifying people. A program that is inclusive, representative and diverse, reflecting today's full range of creative voices from all backgrounds and experiences is the way in which all new music concert events must be conceived; belonging matters! Thank you.

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