Deborah Kavasch

Deborah Kavasch, composer, soprano, specialist in extended vocal techniques, and music educator, 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. 

Kavasch’s compositions have been described as “electrifying” (Synapse), “splendidly diabolical” (ILWC Journal), and illustrating a “virtuosic sound picture” (Bremen Weser Kurier). Her compositional output features much solo vocal chamber music, choral works, instrumental solo and chamber music, wind ensemble and orchestral compositions, and opera.  Her Lost Voices, recorded by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, was released in 2022 on the Navona Records label. A recent commission from Opera Modesto, The Race, an Aesop’s fables mashup, was premiered as an international award-winning film due to the ban on live performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her current Opera Modesto commission, Annabel, a chamber opera based on Edgar Allen Poe’s Annabel Lee, is scheduled for a January 2023 premiere.

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.  She holds degrees in German and Music Theory/Composition from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and a Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego. A faculty member since 1979 and Department Chair from 2006-2016, Kavasch is Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Theory/Composition at California State University, Stanislaus.