ARTIST STATEMENT: I am most interested in the immediate expressiveness of harmony, color, and process. Growing up, I fell in love with the rich ambiguity of impressionism and the meditative and relentlessly developing processes of minimalism and the avant-garde. I love synthesizing these elements in my music. Each composition is new territory for me: a new puzzle and a new sonic world to explore.
SHORT BIO: Praised for her "individual and strong voice" (Colin Clarke, Fanfare Magazine), Natalie Draper explores character and evocative sound-worlds in her music. Recent projects have included a multimedia work for fixed electronics and video ("Monochrome"), a piano trio ("Fragile Music"), and three works for choir ("Three Lenten Motets"). Her music has been included on recordings by Akropolis Reed Quintet, soprano Danielle Buonaituo, and Symphony Number One. She has been featured in articles in Vox Humana, I Care If You Listen, and Van Magazine. Draper has held residencies and fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the I-Park Foundation, Yaddo, and St. David's Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD. She is an assistant professor in the music theory and composition department at the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
LONG BIO: Praised for her "individual and strong voice" (Colin Clarke, Fanfare Magazine), Natalie Draper explores character and evocative sound-worlds in her music. Recent projects have included a multimedia work for fixed electronics and video ("Monochrome"), a piano trio ("Fragile Music"), and three works for choir ("Three Lenten Motets"). "Monochrome" is dedicated to Mind on Fire, "Fragile Music" was a commission supported by the Klocke Foundation for New Music and was premiered by Annie Daigle (violin), Lindy Tsai (cello), and Kara Huber (piano), and "Three Lenten Motets" was the culmination of a collaboration with the Choir of St. David's in Baltimore, Maryland. Draper's music can be found on albums by Akropolis Reed Quintet, soprano Danielle Buonaiuto, and Symphony Number One.
Her music has received honors and recognition--Timelapse Variations, whichwas recorded on the SNOtone label, garnered positive reviews from Lydia Woolever in Baltimore Magazine ("dissonant melodies that build into a unified spiral"), Tim Smith in TheBaltimore Sun (a "tense, darkly colorful churn"), and Mark Medwin in Fanfare Magazine ("...polyrhythm bolstering gorgeous pantonal harmonies and shards of chromatic counterpoint," while "...items burst forth, in a way that might make Mahler smile..."). In 2018, Draper remixed excerpts from Timelapse Variations for the background music of a short NASA film featuring the research of glaciologist Joe MacGregor. This video can be viewed in a variety of places, including Smithsonian Magazine. Her song cycle "O sea-starved, hungry sea," which was released on Danielle Buonaiuto's album "Marfa Songs" in August 2020, was praised by Phyllis Bryn-Julson, who notes that the music allows you to really "'see' the waves and desolate shores," with a final movement that is "simply gorgeous."
Draper has held residencies and fellowships at the Ucross Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, the I-Park Foundation, Yaddo, and St. David's Episcopal Church in Baltimore, MD. She is a graduate of Carleton College, University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, where she studied for several years with composer Oscar Bettison and earned her doctorate. She is an assistant professor in the music theory and composition department at the Setnor School of Music at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
CONTACT: For all inquiries, including the purchase of scores, please email drapernat@gmail.com