| Kitty Brazelton | |
| Birth Place: | Cambridge MA |
| Instrument: | Voice, flute, bass, piano |
| Years Active: | 1970s – present |
| Website: | kitbraz.info |
| Associated Acts: | Musica Orbis, Hide the Babies, What is it Like to Be a Bat?, Dadadah, Hildegurls, Bog Life, California EAR Unit, Manhattan Brass Quintet |
| Birth Date: | October 5, 1951 |
Catherine B. Brazelton (born 1951 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) is a New York-based American composer, bandleader, improviser, singer/songwriter, and instrumentalist. She has released albums and fronted bands across varied genres, including contemporary classical, electronic music, pop, art rock, punk, and avant-garde jazz. She was awarded the 2012 Carl von Ossietsky Composition Prize for Storm, a choral setting of Psalm 104 featuring Brazelton's own retranslation.[1] Her opera Art of Memory was awarded the 2015 Grant for Female Composers from Opera America.[2]
Brazelton was born on October 5, 1951, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Her father was pediatrician and author T. Berry Brazelton.[3] Brazelton attended Swarthmore College and received a doctorate in music from Columbia University in 1994.[4]
She was formerly married to jazz critic and president of the Jazz Journalists Association Howard Mandel and currently teaches composition at Bennington College in Vermont.[5]
Brazelton fronted underground psychedelic rock band Musica Orbis in the 1970s. The band played multiple national tours across the United States and released one album, To the Listeners, in 1977, before disbanding in 1979.
In the 1980s she moved to New York City and played in clubs as lead singer and songwriter of the power pop band Hide the Babies. This led to a residency at NYC concert venue CBGBs, during which Brazelton curated numerous concerts of bands and ensembles of diverse genres from the downtown NYC avant-garde scene as part of her "Real Music Series," featuring regular performances on multiple stages on Sundays at CB's Gallery.[6]
Brazelton founded nine-piece avant-garde ensemble Dadadah in 1990. Dadadah has released two albums, Rise Up! in 1996 and Love Not Love, Lust Not Lust in 1998. David Fricke wrote in a review of Dadadah in Rolling Stone that the band possessed "impressive nerve ... a pop-operatic pow ... orchestrated like Kate Bush kickin’ it with the Mingus Big Band."[7] In 1991, she founded and toured with the American chamber music ensemble Bog Life, with musicians John Uehlein, Libby Van Cleve, Elizabeth Panzer, Chris Nappi, Jay Elfenbein, and Ed Broms.[8] Brazelton co-founded electronic/punk trio What is it Like to Be a Bat? in 1995 with sound artist/composer Dafna Naphtali. In 2001, Harvestworks, with funding from NYSCA, commissioned Bat to write a 30 minute piece, which became 5 Dreams; Marriage, a set of operatic arias based on Naphtali's wedding vows.[9]
The band released a self-titled album in 2003 on the NYC record label Tzadik Records, to critical acclaim.[10] Bat was described by composer John Zorn as "twisted, powerful chamber rock blending a raucous punk aesthetic with vocal harmonies...complex, visionary".[11]
Brazelton collaborated with composers Eve Beglarian, Lisa Bielawa, and Elaine Kaplinsky in 1996 as the band Hildegurls, performing electro-acoustic reinterpretations of medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen, most notably at the Lincoln Center Festival '98. The band later released an album, Electric Ordo Virtutum, in 2009, on Innova Recordings.[12]
Sleeping Out of Doors, Brazelton's concerto for piano and orchestra, was commissioned and premiered in 1998 by Kristjan Järvi and the Absolute Ensemble, and received a grant from the American Music Center and the Margaret Jory CAP.[13]
In 2002, Brazelton's album Chamber Music for the Inner Ear, a collection of 10 chamber pieces with performances from the California E.A.R. Unit and the Manhattan Brass Quintet, was released on CRI Emergency, and re-released in 2007 on New World Records. Frank Oteri wrote of her: "Brazelton, like many of these new composers, is a composer-performer, and equally at home writing a string quartet or playing in a punk rock band."[14] [15]
Ecclesiastes: A Modern Oratorio, an album of twelve choral works setting text from the Book of Ecclesiastes, was released in 2010 on Innova, with funding from NYFA. Brazelton used her own translation of the Hebrew text.[16]
Brazelton's opera Animal Tales, with libretto by George Plimpton, was awarded the 2016 Grant for Female Composers from Opera America.[17]
In 2017, Fierce Grace, a song cycle commissioned by Opera America and co-composed by Brazelton, Laura Kaminsky, Ellen Reid, and Laura Karpman, with libretto by filmmaker Kimberly Reid based on the life of Jeannette Rankin, premiered at the Library of Congress.[18]
During the 2020 pandemic lockdown Brazelton began work on The World is Not Ending—We've Been Here Before, a remote collaborative project involving over 40 singers and instrumentalists.[19] Brazelton is currently working on a new opera, The Art of Memory, based on the life of St. Augustine.[20] The Art of Memory was awarded a NYSCA Grant for production in 2020. She is also recording a studio album, The Planes of Your Location, with LA-based ensemble Isaura String Quartet.[21]