Department of Music Lecture: Molly Herron

Molly Herron, Associate Professor of Composition and Theory, Vanderbilt University

Abstract:
Molly Herron discusses the process of making her album “Through Lines: New Music for Viola da Gamba Consort” and her collaboration with the ensemble Science Ficta. With the album’s seven original works (and four interludes) Herron achieves a modern sound informed by baroque music. She discusses the micro and macro concerns of composing both personally and in conversation with tradition. 
 
Biography:
Composer Molly Herron “thinks deeply about motion, energy, and the physics of sound” (NPR). Whether writing for baroque strings, flower pots, or newly designed instruments, her work achieves “a wonderful consideration of counterpoint and sound in time” (Seen and Heard International). Herron’s work has been featured on the Bang on a Can Marathon, MATA festival, American Composers Orchestra’s SONiC Festival, Fast Forward Austin, Berlin Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival. She has written for Argus Quartet, Sō Percussion, Contemporaneous, and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn among many others. Her work has been supported by MATA, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Brooklyn Arts Council, the Copland Fund, Avaloch Farm New Music, and Exploring the Metropolis.

Herron received a Masters of Music degree from The Steinhardt School at New York University and a Ph.D from Princeton University. She is an Associate Professor of Composition and Theory at Vanderbilt University.