Through the Door
About the Composer
LINDA TUTAS HAUGEN is a composer, performer, and teaching artist, whose works have been performed across four continents. Her catalogue of more than 50 works includes 26 choral compositions, eight orchestral scores, two major works for chorus and orchestra, an opera, multiple solo instrumental, vocal, and chamber pieces, and a piece for wind ensemble. Her work has been critically acclaimed as “music of character and genuine beauty,” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) “superbly crafted… engaging… beautiful and… powerful.” (Opera Today)
Haugen is drawn to projects that reach deeply into the well of human experience. Her willingness to confront challenging emotions and issues through her music, whether they are personal, cultural or spiritual, inspires performers and audiences alike. Her most prominent commissions reflect this. For the world-renowned San Francisco Girls Chorus, she composed Anne Frank, A Living Voice, a powerful seven movement work for women’s chorus and string quartet using text from Anne’s famous diary. For the National Kidney Foundation, to celebrate the 50 th Anniversary of the first successful organ transplant, she composed – Transformations of Darkness and Light, a four- movement work for orchestra exploring the life and death emotions involved in organ transplantation. Her opera, Pocahontas, commissioned by the Virginia Arts Festival and the Virginia Opera, depicts the tragic story of Pocahontas, and the portentous clash of two civilizations.
In her latest work, Through the Door: Voices of Addiction, Loss and Hope, she brings the audience into the world of addiction, and its profound effects on individuals and generations. Her goal is to bring greater understanding of how the addiction crisis has happened, to encourage empathy, and to offer hope for those in recovery.
She has received grants and awards from the American Composers Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, the Bush and Jerome Foundations, and a prestigious three-year fellowship, one of four awarded nationally, from Meet the Composer. Other prominent commissioners include the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, and a project close to her heart, the Appalachian Folk Song Commissioning Consortium – a group of 16 North Carolina and Virginia college and high school women’s choirs. For them, she arranged five poignant Appalachian folk songs – a rich tradition she first heard as a child, as sung to her by her grandmother from Hickory, NC.
Anne Frank: A Living Voice has received numerous performances throughout the US, and since a 2013 European premiere in Switzerland, it has been performed by choirs in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Finland, Belgium, South Korea, and Australia. The Fable of Old Turtle for Orchestra, Native American Flute and Narrator, has had over 80 performances across the US and on three Native American reservations, several by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony. Her choral compositions have been featured at the National Collegiate Choral Organization Conference and at many Regional and National American Choral Directors Association Conferences.
