Carla Kihlstedt

Carla Kihlstedt is a veteran of folk/pop, contemporary classical, improvised and experimental music. A founding member of the bands Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat, Rabbit Rabbit Radio, The Book of Knots, Minamo and 2 Foot Yard, she’s also written for The San Francisco Girls’ Chorus, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Brooklyn Rider.

Her large-scale pieces include At Night We Walk in Circles and Are Consumed by Fire — a song cycle inspired by dreams for the International Contemporary Ensemble; Necessary Monsters — a song cycle written with poet Rafael Osés based on Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings; Pandæmonium — a musical/radio piece for the ROVA Saxophone Quartet about the coming of the Machine Age; and Black Inscription — a multi-media song cycle about our oceans, written with Matthias Bossi and Jeremy Flower with the guidance of scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Committed to the distilled precision and expressive flexibility of song craft, most of her work explores our complicated relationship to the natural world. She is currently launching an international project for Treble Chorus called Long for This World Songbook, inspired by animals on the endangered/threatened/vulnerable species list.

Carla is on the faculty of the Contemporary Improvisation Department of the New England Conservatory, the MFA composition program of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the Creative Gesture program at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.