Biography
As one of the scant American women whose avant-garde compositions earned a foothold in Europe's leading centers for new music, Barbara Kolb stood apart early in her career. Contemporary-music honors came steadily, among them the Rome Prize, while she also worked as an instructor at New York's Third Street Music School Settlement and held visiting posts at assorted universities. Recordings of her pieces appeared from ensembles both domestically and abroad.
Born February 10, 1939, in Hartford, Connecticut, Kolb grew up with a father who served as music director at radio station WTIC; the household welcomed performers across genres, among them jazz artists whose idiom would later color her own output. She completed undergraduate (1961) and graduate (1964) degrees at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford under Arnold Franchetti, having also pursued clarinet. Additional training followed at the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts with Gunther Schuller and Lukas Foss, then in Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship.
In 1969 Kolb became the first American woman awarded the Rome Prize, securing a three-year residency at the American Academy in Rome. Performances of her music surfaced during the 1970s, including an orchestral rendering of the chamber piece Soundings given by the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez.
That contact with Boulez opened further doors, leading to a six-month stay at his IRCAM facility in Paris during 1983–1984. A commission for chamber orchestra and tape yielded Millefoglie, unveiled in 1985 at the Centre Georges Pompidou; the score traveled widely across Europe, North America, and Japan. The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne recorded it in 1992 for New World Records, and the release remains available as Barbara Kolb: Millefoglie and Other Works. Additional scores emerged from three Tanglewood Fellowships, four MacDowell Colony residencies, and two Guggenheim Fellowships. Among them stood the piano concerto Voyants, commissioned by Radio France yet also heard in Italy, Austria, Washington’s Kennedy Center, and Memphis’s Imagine Festival.
All in Good Time, an orchestral work from 1994, received outings from the New York Philharmonic, the St. Louis Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony, all led by Leonard Slatkin. Kolb’s language remained atonal, marked by fluid, impressionistic textures and occasional jazz inflections. She stayed productive into later years; Three Medieval Chants for saxophone quartet reached its premiere in Greenville, North Carolina, in 2019. By the mid-2020s more than fifteen of her compositions existed on disc.
Alongside her earlier post at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Kolb taught at Rhode Island College and the Eastman School of Music and created a music-theory curriculum for blind students. She died in North Providence, Rhode Island, on October 21, 2024.
Born February 10, 1939, in Hartford, Connecticut, Kolb grew up with a father who served as music director at radio station WTIC; the household welcomed performers across genres, among them jazz artists whose idiom would later color her own output. She completed undergraduate (1961) and graduate (1964) degrees at the Hartt School of Music of the University of Hartford under Arnold Franchetti, having also pursued clarinet. Additional training followed at the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts with Gunther Schuller and Lukas Foss, then in Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship.
In 1969 Kolb became the first American woman awarded the Rome Prize, securing a three-year residency at the American Academy in Rome. Performances of her music surfaced during the 1970s, including an orchestral rendering of the chamber piece Soundings given by the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez.
That contact with Boulez opened further doors, leading to a six-month stay at his IRCAM facility in Paris during 1983–1984. A commission for chamber orchestra and tape yielded Millefoglie, unveiled in 1985 at the Centre Georges Pompidou; the score traveled widely across Europe, North America, and Japan. The Nouvel Ensemble Moderne recorded it in 1992 for New World Records, and the release remains available as Barbara Kolb: Millefoglie and Other Works. Additional scores emerged from three Tanglewood Fellowships, four MacDowell Colony residencies, and two Guggenheim Fellowships. Among them stood the piano concerto Voyants, commissioned by Radio France yet also heard in Italy, Austria, Washington’s Kennedy Center, and Memphis’s Imagine Festival.
All in Good Time, an orchestral work from 1994, received outings from the New York Philharmonic, the St. Louis Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony, all led by Leonard Slatkin. Kolb’s language remained atonal, marked by fluid, impressionistic textures and occasional jazz inflections. She stayed productive into later years; Three Medieval Chants for saxophone quartet reached its premiere in Greenville, North Carolina, in 2019. By the mid-2020s more than fifteen of her compositions existed on disc.
Alongside her earlier post at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Kolb taught at Rhode Island College and the Eastman School of Music and created a music-theory curriculum for blind students. She died in North Providence, Rhode Island, on October 21, 2024.
Albums
