Deborah Kavasch

Deborah Kavasch, BMI composer, soprano, educator, and specialist in extended vocal techniques, has had works commissioned and performed in North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and China. She has received grants and residencies in composition and performance, was a 1987 Fulbright Senior Scholar to Stockholm, and has appeared in major international music centers and festivals in concerts, solo recitals, workshops, lecture/demonstrations, and television and radio broadcasts since 1981. 

Her compositions have been described as “electrifying” (Synapse), “splendidly diabolical” (ILWC Journal), and “virtuosic sound picture” (Bremen Weser Kurier). Her compositional output features much solo and solo vocal chamber music, choral works, instrumental solo and chamber music, wind ensemble and orchestral compositions, and opera. Her two operas commissioned by Opera Modesto include The Race: an Aesop’s Fables Mashup, premiered in 2021 as an internationally award-winning film, and Annabel, based on Edgar Allen Poe’s Annabel Lee, premiered in 2023. 

Kavasch is distributed by Forrests Music and is recorded on Lovely Records, Composers Recordings, Inc., Cambria Recordings, TNC Classical, Everglade Records, Soundset Recordings, and Navona Records. Recent recordings on Navona Records include her choral composition Feather on God’s Breath (The Crossing), and orchestral works Lost Voices (Royal Scottish National Orchestra), Desert Storm (London Symphony Orchestra), and The Peace of Wild Things: A Reflection (LSO with violin soloist Davide Alogna).

Kavasch holds degrees in German and Music Theory/Composition from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and the Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego. She is Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory/Composition at California State University, Stanislaus, where she has been a faculty member since 1979.