Elizabeth Alexander grew up in the Carolinas and Appalachian Ohio. Her love of music, language and challenging questions is reflected in her catalog of over 150 compositions in a wide variety of classical and vernacular styles. Her commissions have included music for orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo voices, and especially her choral pieces, which have been performed by thousands of choruses worldwide.
Her theatrically-inclined works include the one-woman concert-length Nature Creature as well as her current project, Split Hickory, a music theater work set in present-day Appalachia. Selections from Split Hickory have been workshopped at Nautilus Music-Theater’s Rough Cuts (Minneapolis), and a first workshop took place in Fall 2022 at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Elizabeth’s text settings of both original lyrics and the words of others prompted Choral Director Magazine to write that “her mastery of prosody and declamation results in a marriage between music and text that is dynamic and indelible.” Other reviewers have described her music as “brilliantly innovative” (New York Concert Review), “truly inspired” (Boston Intelligencer) and “stunning…exquisite…sculpting light into sound” (Kansas City Metropolis).
She studied composition with Jack Gallagher at The College of Wooster, and with Steven Stucky, Yehudi Wyner and Karel Husa at Cornell University, from which she received her doctorate in Music Composition. She has received grants, awards and fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, New Music USA, Minnesota State Arts Board, New York Council on the Arts, Wisconsin Arts Board, National Orchestral Association, International League of Women Composers, and American Composers Forum.
Elizabeth lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she practices yoga, makes pretty good biscuits, and looks for all kinds of excuses to visit her two grown sons.