Sarah Kirkland Snider is a composer of instrumental music and art songs that straddle the border "between richly orchestrated indie rock and straight chamber music,"[1] and a co-director of New Amsterdam Records.
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Snider was born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey. She received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her M.M. and Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and David Lang. Other notable teachers include Christopher Rouse and Marc-Andre Dalbavie at the Aspen Music Festival, and Justin Dello Joio.
Snider's musical compositions frequently borrow from indie-rock and popular musical idioms as well as classical chamber music forms and instrumentation. These stylistic choices have urged critics to label her music as part of the burgeoning indie-classical movement, where she has been called "perhaps the most sophisticated" of voices within this genre.[1] Her choice of performance spaces further indicate an indifference to genre, having given performances at venues ranging from New York's most highbrow classical venues including Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall to intimate rock venues such as (Le) Poisson Rouge and The Bell House. Snider has received commissions and performances from artists and ensembles across a wide range of styles, including ACME, Signal, yMusic, the Knights, NOW Ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and a new collaboration with Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond).
Snider has also demonstrated advocacy for new music, both as a co-curator of new music festivals such as the Look & Listen Festival, and as a co-director of the independent non-profit label New Amsterdam Records alongside William Brittelle and Judd Greenstein.
Much of Snider's work between 2007-2011 has revolved around Penelope, a composition based on the faithful wife from Homer's Odyssey with lyrics by playwright Ellen McLaughlin. The cycle originated as a music-theater piece commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Center, and served as a contemporary meditation on the notions of memory and identity that are presented in the original poem. Since then, the piece has been expanded into an orchestral song cycle released on New Amsterdam Records in 2010. The album contains vocals by Shara Worden and orchestral accompaniment by Signal, and was the subject of tremendous critical acclaim from both classical and indie-rock publications. The album was listed as Time Out New York's No. 1 Classical Album of 2010,[2] NPR'S Top 5 Genre-Defying Albums, WNYC New Sounds' Top 10 Albums of 2010,[3] Huffington Post's Top 10 Alternative-Art Songs of the decade (for "The Lotus Eaters")[4] among dozens of other year end lists. The album also received unusually prestigious indie-rock accolades for a classical album, including an 8.2/10 in Pitchfork.[1] Penelope was also included in the CMJ 200, Snider's name was featured on the cover of The Believer.[5] Like most of Snider's work, it has been praised foremost for its ability to "deftly weave pop... and classical."[3] Some have found "hints of Radiohead and David Lang... St. Vincent and Chopin"[6] whereas others have noted "traces of Part and Sibelius"[7] in her orchestration. The piece has also been called a "hauntingly vivid psychological portrait"[1] that conjures "sensations of abandonment, agitation, grief and reconciliation."[8]