Katherine Hoover was born in West Virginia and resides in New York, where she maintains an active career as composer, conductor, and flutist. She is the recipient of a 1979 National Endowment Composer’s Fellowship and many other awards, including an 1994 Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award in Composition. Four of her pieces have won the National Flute Association’s Newly Published Music Competition, in 1987, 1991, 1993 and 1994. She has also received a grant from the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and numerous grants from Meet the Composer. In March, 1996 she was Composer-in-Residence at the fourth Festival of Women Composers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has appeared at many universities and colleges, including the U. of Wisconsin at Madison, Haverford College, U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and U. of California at Berkeley and at Davis. She has been commissioned by the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, the Women’s Philharmonic, the Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Huntingdon Trio, and Duologue, among many others. Her works are published by Theodore Presser, Carl Fischer, and Papagena Press. CD’s of her music have been issued on Koch International Classics, Delos, Cantilena Bayer, Boston and Leonarda.

Ms. Hoover’s works have been performed by many orchestras. Her tone poem Eleni: A Greek Tragedy, premiered by the Harrisburg Symphony under Larry Newland in 1987, has been performed by eleven other orchestras. including the Fort Worth Symphony, under conductor John Giordano. Her Clarinet Concerto, written for the jazz virtuoso Eddie Daniels, was premiered by Mr. Daniels with the Santa Fe Symphony. In January, 1994, Ms. Hoover conducted the premiere of her Night Skies, a 25-minute work for large orchestra, with the Harrisburg Symphony.

The Dorian, Sylvan and Richards Quintets, the Atlanta Chamber Players, the Colorado and Montclaire Quartets, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet and the Huntingdon and Verdehr Trios are among the many chamber groups which have featured her work. In May, 1989, the New Jersey Chamber Music Society premiered her Quintet (Da Pacem) for piano and strings at Alice Tully Hall in New York’s Lincoln Center. Julius Baker, Eugenia Zukerman, Sharon Robinson, Carol Wincenc, and Metropolitan Opera bass John Cheek have also presented her pieces.

Ms. Hoover attended the Eastman School of Music, receiving her Bachelor of Music in Music Theory and a Performer’s Certificate in Flute in 1959. Her main flute study was with Joseph Mariano, and later with William Kincaid in Philadelphia. While a faculty member at the Manhattan School, she completed a Masters in Music Theory at that institution Ms. Hoover has also attended the Conductors Institute in South Carolina. As player, theorist, teacher, and conductor Ms. Hoover has studied hundreds of scores; these scores were her primary composition Instruction.

As a flutist Ms. Hoover has given concerto performances at Lincoln Center and performed with leading ballet and opera companies in all of New York’s major halls. She has played numerous recitals, both live and on radio and television, and recorded 5010 and chamber repertoire for Arabesque, Leonarda, CRI, Grenadilla, and Opus One.

Ms. Hoover has become active as a conductor in the last few years, leading performances of her own work and that of others in Wisconsin, West Virginia, and New York, and Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1995 she traveled to Brataslava for the recording of her Night Skies and Eleni: A Greek Tragedy, returning for the premiere of her new Dances and Variations at Kennedy Center. The commissioning, rehearsing, and premiere of this piece are the subject of a prize winning documentary, called New Music, by Deborah Novak.

(Contribution by <Sisterko1@aol.com>)