Karen P. Thomas

Karen P. Thomas (born 1957), composer and conductor, is the Artistic Director and Conductor of Seattle Pro Musica and Director of Music at University Unitarian Church. With Seattle Pro Musica she has produced six CD recordings, and has received the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence and the ASCAP-Chorus America Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. Ms. Thomas has guest conducted at international festivals in Europe and North America, and has served on the boards of the American Choral Director's Association for Washington State, the Conductor's Guild, the League-ISCM and the International Alliance for Women in Music. Ms. Thomas is a recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and ASCAP, among others. Her compositions have been awarded prizes in various competitions, and her commissions include works for the Grand Jubilee 2000 in Rome, the American Guild of Organists, and the Goodwill Arts Festival. Her compositions are regularly performed internationally, by groups such as The Hilliard Ensemble, and have been praised as "superb work of the utmost sensitivity and beauty." Her conducting has received critical praise for its "integrity and high purpose...delivered with taste and impeccable musicianship."
Awards and Fellowships
Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence
Seattle Arts Commission Seattle Artists Award
Distinguished Alumna Award - Cornish College of the Arts
His Majestie's Clerkes Choral Composition Competition
ASCAP-Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music
Artist Trust GAP Grant
Oregon Bach Festival Composition Fellow
Chorus of Westerly Conducting Fellow
Delius Composition Contest First Place
National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors Composition Contest
Dorland Mountain Arts Colony Composition Fellow
Washington State Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Award
Melodious Accord Composition Contest
King County Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant
National Endowment for the Arts Challenge III Grant (Goodwill Arts Festival co-recipient)
New Langton Arts (co-recipient)
Artist Trust Fellowship
Northwest Chamber Orchestra Composers Forum Award
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Charles E. Ives Scholar
Brechemin Foundation Scholar
International League of Women Composers' Third Annual Search for New Music
Selected Conducting Performances
Bergen International Festival
Goodwill Arts Festival
World Festival of Women's Singing
Festival Vancouver
International Conference on Women in Music
Compositions Performed By
Hilliard Ensemble
International Festival Donne in Musica; Italy
Bergen International Festival; Norway
Grand Jubilee for the Year 2000; Rome
World Festival of Women's Singing
International Congress on Women in Music; London, England and Bilbao, Spain
Festival Vancouver; Canada
Selected Compositions
Instrumental
When night came... (for the women of Bosnia) clarinet & chamber ensemble or orchestra; or clarinet and piano
Roundup; saxophone quartet
Clarion Dances; brass ensemble
There must be a Lone Ranger! soprano or mezzo, narrator, chamber ensemble
Rhapsodic Ignition, guitar
Choral
Lux Lucis
Over the City (for Hiroshima)
Three Medieval Lyrics
Four Lewis Carroll Songs
Vocal
Cowboy Songs
Opera
Coyote's Tail; one-act opera for children
Dance
Boxiana: The Women's Flyweight Championship of the World
References
External links
Karen P. Thomas - Official Website
Biography at Seattle Pro Musica
Biography at University Unitarian Church
American women classical composers
American classical composers
American women conductors (music)
Living people
Cornish College of the Arts alumni
1957 births
21st-century American conductors (music)
21st-century American women musicians