Composer Garth Baxter is noted for his modern traditionalist style of writing. He is recognized as one of the preeminent composers of art songs and has been described as an unabashed, lyrical, tonal composer.
Baxter’s compositions for chorus, orchestra, symphonic band, piano, organ, flute, voice, and guitar, as well as other instrumental combinations, have been performed throughout the world. His music has been featured on radio and on-line programs worldwide. He has received numerous awards, commissions, and honors. His song cycle, “From the Heart: Three American Women” (Columbia Music Company) was the topic of a doctoral dissertation: American Women’s Poetry Set to Music: Garth Baxter’s From the Heart: Three American Women—Sara Teasdale, Susan Laura Lugo and Willa Cather (Evelyn Fair, 2005 Shenandoah Conservatory.) Two of his pieces were selected as the topic of the master’s thesis Folksongs: the motivic connector to the human spirit as exemplified in composer Garth Baxter’s La Nostalgie and The Darkness Between Us.” (Isabelle Pazar, 2020, University of Massachusetts, Amherst))
His music has been praised in numerous publications:
“The ability of Baxter to create music that sounds and speaks naturally from such vast array of instrumental colors is indicative of a true master.”
Brice Boorman, Chalked Up Reviews
“Baxter’s ear for matching the rhythm and sense of the verse quickly allows him to identify the central point of emotional interest at which his inspiration and the singer’s art intersect.”
Laurence Vittes, Gramophone Magazine
“Baxter’s music is undeniably accessible, and it is also music of integrity and power.”
Textura
“The world needs beauty and there is plenty of it to be found in this collection of art songs by American composer Garth Baxter. Baxter knows how to shape lovely melodic lines and to cushion them within a warm harmonic framework.”
Christopher Berg, Journal of Singing
His recording, Ask the Moon, works for voice and piano by Garth Baxter, released January 2018 by PARMA Recordings (Navona), was highly acclaimed by Gramophone Magazine in the UK, by Luciano Feliciani of on the Italian on-line blog Kathodik in Italy, and by Diane Jones On The Air on WCNY-FM in Syracuse, New York, among others.
The recording Katherine Keem Sings Songs and Arias by Garth Baxter, released fall 2014 by Centaur Records, has been acclaimed for its significant contribution to the voice and guitar repertoire by Bernard Werner of Thisisclassicalmusic.com, who highlighted “Two Songs of
Reflections” and “From the Heart, Three American Women” from this release.
A recording of Baxter’s instrumental works, Resistance, was released from PARMA Recordings (Navona) February 2019 to wonderful reviews. His work Still Falls the Rain was featured on the album Voices of Earth and Air, Vol. 3 released by PARMA (Navona) in October, 2020. His highly acclaimed recording of recent music, Ask of me What the Birds Sang, from PARMA Recordings, was released in December 2022. It features soprano Katie Procell, guitarist Jeremy Lyons, the Patagonia Winds, mezzo soprano Christine Thomas, pianists Bonghee Lee, Valerie Hsu, Andrew Stewart, clarinetist Jennifer Tscheulin, flutist Karen Johnson, and the Kühn Choir of Prague conducted by Lenka Navrátilová.
Baxter’s opera Lily, An American Opera, with librettist Lisa VanAuken, premiered November 2022 to enthusiastic reviews. It has been called “a masterpiece” that “fits within the genre of traditional opera and needs to be part of the repertoire.” Lily is the subject of a performance
lecture hosted by Boheme Opera in New Jersey. It was featured in the music blog outwardsound.org by Andrea Morris titled “Garth Baxter’s Lily” April 28, 2023. This opera has been viewed online more than 5,100 times since its release.
Baxter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1946, and moved to California when he was nine years old. He earned music degrees from Pepperdine University and California State University at Northridge. He studied composition with Robert Hall Lewis, Joseph Wagner, and
William Thornton. He studied guitar with Ronald C. Purcell and David Underwood. In addition to writing music, Baxter continues to mentor emerging composers.
Baxter’s works are published by Les Productions D’OZ, Doberman-YPPan, ALRY Publications, Columbia Music Company, Guitar Chamber Music Press, Mel Bay Publications, North Star Music, and Theodore Presser.
About the composer
Garth Baxter
A note from Garth Baxter...
Lily is the crowning achievement of my career as a composer. Librettist Lisa VanAuken and I strove to create a work of dramatic integrity while at the same time including all of the components that seduce opera lovers. Each scene of Lily is a concise drama with recurring melodic ideas that give coherence, as well as individual character, to the scene. Lily has 9 arias that are filled with memorable melodies reminiscent of the 19th Century classics of Puccini and Verdi, but with a fresh American sound. My music has been described as having an individual voice that combines old elements in new and fascinating ways.* This is most evident in Lily.
This opera is a work that audiences and singers will love. Based very loosely on the brilliant novel The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, this is the tragic story of Lily Bart who will capture your heart with her flirty dalliances with her lover Seldon. You will enjoy her charisma as she enters party scenes, and you will feel her frustration and pain as her world falls apart.
About the librettist
Lisa VanAuken (Lisa Van Allen)holds an MFA in Fiction from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she held a fellowship as the assistant editor of The Literary Review; An International Journal of Contemporary Writing. Her short prose was nominated for inclusion in Best New American Writing and The Pushcart Prize. Lisa’s work has been published in many literary journals, including Fourth Genre, Many Mountains Moving, Fugue, Limestone, The MacGuffin, Sou’wester, The Literary Review (TLRweb), Flyway, Southeast Review, CICADA, Baltimore’s Citypaper, and many other venues. Her novels have been published pseudonymously, most prominently under the name Lisa Van Allen, by three major houses, translated into over nine languages, and appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.
Lisa VanAuken
(Lisa Van Allen)
About Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton was born January 24, 1862 during the American Civil War. Her parents were descendants of prosperous English and Dutch businessmen and were a part of the of the fashionable New York society that Edith would describe in much of her writing This was a society which the only acceptable goal for a woman was to marry a man from the upper class and become the woman in charge of the household.
Her family spent 6 years in Europe soon after the end of the war. She was ill during part of this time. The family moved back to the United States and settled in Newport, Rhode Island. Edith was greatly impressed by Europe and returned there many times and finally settled permanently in Paris in the early 1900s.
Edith showed an early love for books and made her first attempt at writing a novel when she was only 11 years old. She wrote poetry at this early time and had her first publication at the age of 13. She was well educated and spoke three foreign languages
After the death of her beloved father in 1885, when she was twenty-three, and seeming on the verge of being considered a spinster, Edith married Edward Wharton, an upper society gentleman from Boston, 12 years her senior. They traveled quite a bit socializing in New York and Newport. Although comfortable in this lifestyle, she became more and more involved in writing.
By the early 1900s the marriage was beginning to suffer. Both she and her husband had affairs. In addition, he gradually fell into deep mental illness and was institutionalized in 1912. Edith divorced him in 1913 and never remarried.
Edith had published her first short story in 1891, and her first story collection, The Greater Inclination, in 1899. Soon followed a short novel, The Touchstone in 1900, and then her first real novel, The Valley of Decision, in 1902. That same year she began corresponding with Henry James, to whom she had been introduced by mutual friends. He thought highly of her work. Their friendship grew as James saw her talent grow. The book that made Edith famous was The House of Mirth. Henry James died in 1916 and her novel, The Age of Innocence shortly followed.
Wharton’s life was also marked her incredible service to France and to the European refugees who flooded Paris during World War I. This work was recognized by the French government which made her a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur—the first woman to receive such an honor. When she died in 1937, her coffin was attended by French war veterans on recognition of her adopted country.
Edith Wharton is considered one of the great novelists of the early 20th Century. Her novels include The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, and the short but powerful love story, Ethan Frome.
Edith Wharton
“IN LISTENING TO LILY, I FELT PRIVILEGED TO HEAR BEAUTIFUL, POWERFUL MUSIC, WITH A HEART-WRENCHING TALE OF LOVE, HEARTBREAK, AND DESPAIR. WHAT AN HONOR AND A RICH AND INTENSE EXPERIENCE!"
-Katherine Keem, Soprano