Linda Chase is a composer and improvising flutist who teaches interdisciplinary arts, composition, improvisation, and the transformational power of music from traditions around the world. She recently collaborated with world-renowned poet Jane Hirshfield, composing music to Hirshfield’s poetry, and finished a CD of their performance at NEC, Hope is the Hardest Love We Carry.
In 2012 she was an artist-in-residence at the Grand Canyon, and composed several pieces for chamber ensemble and voice that speak of conservation and reverence. In 2011 she received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation to explore the relationship between sound and silence, and composed music based on Japanese tanka poems.
Chase's interest in interdisciplinary arts has led her to write a book on musical collaboration called Painting Music, Dancing Poems. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in Sustainability through Music Education, focusing on Ecomusicology, and holds degrees from Evergreen State College, Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory of Music. She is the founder and director of her own collaborative new music group, Wild Garden Chamber Ensemble, which seeks to transcend traditional boundaries of composition, improvisation, poetry, and visual expression.
Chase is currently composing pieces for chamber groups to bring light to issues of environmental and social injustice. She has written extensively for chamber combinations, choir, spoken word, jazz songs, and has recorded 6 CDs of original music. Chase won the Kaji Aso Composer’s Prize for her composition, Tanabata Star Festival, based on poetry of Japanese poet and artist Kaji Aso. Poetic Reflections, her chamber music incorporating Rumi poetry, was supported by a Berklee Faculty Fellowship. She composed an original score for Tartuffe, performed at the ART in Cambridge, and her choral music has had numerous performances at the Old Cambridge Church, where she also performs at the Jazz Mass. She was awarded two artist residencies at the Morris Graves Institute in Northern California to compose pieces based on the redwood forest, and also leads women’s music and nature retreats.
Diploma, Berklee College of Music. B.A., Expressive Arts, Evergreen State College. M.M., Contemporary Musical Arts, New England Conservatory. Studies with Ran Blake, Michael Gandolfi, and Peter Row. Also faculty of Berklee College of Music.
Leave of absence: Fall 2020
