Marti Epstein is a composer whose music has been performed by the San Francisco Symphony, The Radio Symphony Orchestra of Frankfurt, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, Ensemble Modern, and members of the Boston Symphony. She is a long-time professor of composition at Berklee College of Music.
She has completed commissions for the Fromm Foundation, The Munich Biennale, the Iowa Brass Quintet, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Longy School of Music, the Ludovico Ensemble, Guerilla Opera, the Radius Ensemble, Tanglewood Music Center, Winsor Music, Boston Opera Collaborative, and the Callithumpian Consort. She has been a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. Marti has twice been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.
During the 2017-2018 concert season, Marti’s work was featured extensively alongside the work of Anton Webern on the Trinity Wall Street’s Time’s Arrow Festival in New York City. Her music was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players in Leipzig, Germany in June 2018. In October 2018, Boston Opera Collaborative presented the premiere of Absent Grace, Marti’s contribution to the BOC Opera Bites project. Her first opera, Rumpelstiltskin, was presented in a revival performance with animated shadow puppetry in New York City in May 2019. In November 2019, the Ludovico Ensemble presented a three-concert festival of her music to celebrate her 60th birthday.
In 2020, Marti was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to compose Seven Sisters, Radiant Sisters for the Hinge Ensemble, Alpenglow for loadbang, and In Praise of Broken Clocks for soundicon. She recently released Nebraska Impromptu, an album of chamber music for clarinet featuring Rane Moore and members of Winsor Music, on New Focus Recordings.
During her 2022 MacDowell residency, Marti composed two works. The first was Melisande for two sopranos and is a reimagining of the character Melisande from the Debussy opera Peleas and Melisande and the Maeterlinck plays Peleas and Melisande and Ariane and Bluebeard. Marti also composed The Nemophilist, a piece for chamber ensemble for Collage New Music of Boston.
