Caroline Mallonee - COMPOSER

Caroline MallonEe

Caroline Mallonee (b. 1975) is an award-winning composer and performer based in Buffalo, NY. Inspired by scientific phenomena, visual art, and musical puzzles, Mallonee has been commissioned to write new pieces for prominent ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Spektral Quartet, Firebird Ensemble, Present Music, Wet Ink Ensemble, Antares, PRISM Quartet, Ciompi Quartet, Ethos Percussion, and the Buffalo Chamber Players, for whom she serves as composer-in-residence. Mallonee’s music has been programmed at venues in New York City including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, Bargemusic, Tenri Cultural Center, Town Hall, Roulette, and Tonic, as well as further afield at the Long Leaf Opera Festival (NC), Carlsbad Music Festival (CA), Bennington Chamber Music Conference (VT), Cambridge Music Festival (UK), Tokyo Opera City (Japan), the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, DC), Turner Ballroom (Milwaukee, WI) and Jordan Hall (Boston, MA).

Her music has been performed by soloists including pianists Eric Huebner, Steven Beck, Stephen Gosling, and John McDonald, as well as Haruka Fujii (percussion), Natasha Farny (cello), Miranda Cuckson (violin), Amy Glidden (violin), Salley Koo (violin), Feng Hew (cello), Janz Castelo (viola), and Kimberly Sparr (viola).

The New York Philharmonic included her music on its CONTACT! new music series at National Sawdust in 2015 and has commissioned a new piece as part of its Project 19 commissioning project.

Mallonee has been recognized through commissions and awards from the Fromm Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Meet The Composer, the Jerome Fund for New Music, and ASCAP, from which she received a Morton Gould Young Composers Award. 

She is a professional singer in Vocális Chamber Choir and Harmonia Chamber Singers and is the director of the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat, a week-long festival for composers and improvisers held in New Hampshire each June. She was a long-time faculty member of The Walden School Young Musicians Program, where she also served as Academic Dean. As a violinist, Mallonee was a founding member of pulsoptional (based in North Carolina) and Glissando bin Laden (based in New York City).

She studied composition with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague (Fulbright Fellowship, 2005), Scott Lindroth and Stephen Jaffe at Duke University (Ph.D. 2006), Joseph Schwantner and Evan Ziporyn at the Yale School of Music (M.M. 2000), and Bernard Rands and Mario Davidovsky at Harvard University (B.A. 1997).