11/27/2024
A well-deserved honor for our own Executive Director!
2024 COMMUNITY ARTS AWARDS SPOTLIGHT
Community Medal of Arts
ELIZABETH START
Join in the celebration at the Community Arts Awards presentation on Tuesday, December 10 at 7:00 pm at the Dale B. Lake Auditorium on the campus of KVCC - all are welcome! RSVP to attend the free celebration, read the full bios of all the recipients, and learn more about the awards at
https://www.kalamazooarts.org/2024caa/!
Composer, cellist, arts administrator, and union officer Elizabeth Start performs with the Kalamazoo and the Elgin (Illinois) Symphonies; is Executive Director of the Connecting Chords Music Festival; and Secretary/Treasurer of the Kalamazoo Federation of Musicians. A Kalamazoo native and KCHS graduate, she left town in 1977, returning in 2001. She is a member of the Chicago Composers' Consortium, Chicago Musicians Club of Women, and the International Alliance of Women in Music (for whom she provides CD reviews). Her "Echoes in Life" appears on Sphinx Laureate Thomas Mesa's 2022 Global Music Award-winning CD "Division of Memory." Mesa will perform the work on November 22, 2024 at the DiMenna Center in New York. She has a mandolin concerto written for and recorded by Italian mandolin virtuoso, Carlo Aonzo.
She's received numerous grants and commissions and over 500 performances of over 140 works. Honors in 2024 include her "Traces: Inspired by Strong Women" (commissioned by the KSO for its 100th season) which won the Christine Clark/Theodore Front prize for large ensemble in the International Alliance of Women in Music Search for New Music; "Elizabethan Fantasy" was selected for ASTA Virtual String Teacher Summit; "Nostalgia" was selected for She Scores! 2024, Cleveland; and her "Conclusions" was selected as one of eight quartets for Music Madness, Raleigh and Durham, NC. She also completed a new string quartet commission and heard the WMU Trombone Choir premiere another commissioned work.
While living in Chicago, she performed with Ralph Shapey's Contemporary Chamber Players, on chamber concerts of new music with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for American Women Composers, CUBE, and New Music Chicago. She has taught adjunct cello, acoustics, composition, music history and theory, world music, and music appreciation at institutions including Columbia College, DePaul University, Elgin Suzuki, and Kalamazoo College. She has a BA in mathematics and BM in cello from Oberlin, two MMs, in cello and theory/composition from Northern Illinois University, and a PhD in composition from the University of Chicago.
