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 is a native of the Hudson Valley and now lives in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land with spouse Tim and dog Hendrix. Kurt is the founding Artistic Director and violist of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, the current Artistic Director of the Composers Conference, and is a Professor of Music Composition at UC Davis. Kurt 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, National Endowment for the Arts, and Creative Capital. Current composition projects include new works for ekmeles, Departure Duo, pianist David Kaplan, Brightwork, Shamisen player Hidejiro Honjoh, duoJalal, violinist Jessica Tong and cellist Ashley Bathgate, cellist Michelle Kesler, and percussionist Josh Perry.

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 work is made in the pursuit of making something beautiful.

Kurt’s 2023-24 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 work celebrating the Centennial of the Curtis Institute of Music featuring bass trombonist Blair Bollinger (gyre…tone for bass trombone and electronics), and a new large ensemble work for 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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