Lynn Gumert
Composing a Life through Creativity
Composer Bio
Lynn Gumert is a composer/arranger, performer, and conductor. They earned their masters and doctorate in music composition from Indiana University-Bloomington, where they studied with Claude Baker, Eugene O'Brien, and Don Freund. They have participated in master classes with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Shulamit Ran, and Ladislav Kubik. In 2012, they were awarded an Honorable Mention in the Eighth Aliénor International Harpsichord Competition for Desert Song (Soprano, Violin, and Harpsichord). Their compositions have been performed in the U.S., South America, and Europe, including performances by the Contemporary Music Forum in Washington, D.C., the Festival of Women Composers International, Society of Composers Regional Conferences, the Midwest Composers Symposium in Oberlin, and the Seventh International Alliance of Women in Music Concert. They have received commissions for vocal, choral, early music ensemble, viola da gamba, and guitar compositions. They were awarded an orchestral reading session by the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic and a broadcast on the nationally syndicated public radio program Harmonia. They have been a resident artist at the Millay Colony for the Arts—where they were chosen as the Jean and Louis Dreyfuss Foundation Fellow for 2008—and at The Ucross Foundation.
Commissions include Exile, D’Estas Aves, and Hago de lo flaco fuerte (voices and early music ensemble), which were commissioned by the Garden State Sinfonia in New Jersey based on multicultural texts about immigration and exile, and Roundabout a musico-dramatic piece for trombone duet and chamber ensemble. Gumert’s work for dance includes Milkweed (solo voice), which was commissioned by Christine Colosimo for the “I’ll have what she’s having…” Dance Project presented at Ryder University, and Quemar las naves, which was commissioned by Lynn Brooks and the Grant Street Dance Company of Lancaster, PA for its production of Migrations: Resistance and Endurance. They composed songs and incidental music for several productions of the Gettysburg College Drama Department, including Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan. Helen and Teacher, an original musical in two acts with script and libretto by Susan Russell, was premiered at the Gettysburg Fringe Festival after receiving two staged readings funded by the Mellon Foundation.
Gumert has presented a number of lecture-recitals on her compositions, including Composing a Life: The Music of Lynn Gumert, which was sponsored by SAI Music Fraternity at Gettysburg College, and Bind Me, I Still Can Sing: Notes of a Woman Composer, which was presented at the Five College Women's Studies Research Center in South Hadley, MA. They have worked with Artist in Education programs in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, teaching composition workshops as well as workshops on Latin American, Sephardic, and Spanish music. They were Composer-in-Residence for the Lincoln Intermediate Unit summer school program for children of migrants, located in Adams County, PA, and part of the initial Community Artist Residency Training (CARTS) program in New Brunswick, working with El Club Tu Perteneces, a day program for Spanish-speaking older adults.
A vocalist and recorder player, they are Artistic Director of Zorzal Music Ensemble, whose debut CD, Crossroads/Encrucijadas, integrates Gumert's original compositions and arrangements with colonial-period Latin American music, Sephardic music, and Latin American folk music. They have presented lecture-recitals on aspects of colonial-period Latin American music at the College Music Society International Conference in Costa Rica and at the Seventh International Festival of Women Composers in Pittsburgh.