ABOUT

Biography

Anna-Louise Walton is an American composer of chamber, orchestral, and electronic music. In her music, she explores concepts of mimicry, the notation of improvisatory rhythms, and the utilization of household objects such as PVC pipe, shot glasses, and knitting needles. 

Her works have been performed by ensembles such as Hypercube Ensemble, Ekmeles, TAK Ensemble, the Bergamot Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Trio Catch, Fonema Consort, Quatuor Diotima, Mivos Quartet, Surplus Ensemble, Ecce Ensemble, Switch~ Ensemble, Versipel Collective, and the Wooster Symphony Orchestra.  Her music has also been featured at Musikprotokoll, MATA Festival, IRCAM’s ManiFeste, Darmstadt International Summer Course, Royaumont Voix Nouvelles, Heidelberger Frühling Festival, Schloss Summer Academy, impuls Festival, VIPA Festival, Electric LaTex Festival, New Music on the Bayou, and highSCORE Festival.

In 2020, Walton served as a mentor for young composers in MATA Jr. She has received a BMI Student Composer Award (2019), the Walden County Promising Young Composers Competition Award (2021), the IAWM Choral/Vocal Ensemble Prize (2021), and the Martirano First Prize Award (2023). Recent commissions include works for Trio Zukan, as winner of the EHTE Composition Contest in 2021, and for Proton Bern, having been selected for Protonwerk No. 13 in 2022.

In her work as a scholar, Walton researches approaches to composition with unconventional vocal techniques, the perception of slowness in music, the use of rudimentary objects in new music, and the work of women composers such as Éliane Radigue and Anna Korsun. In 2022, she presented her paper “On Slowness: The Perception of Time in the Music of Éliane Radigue” at the 8th International Conference on Music and Minimalism at Bowling Green State University.

Though Walton did not start composing formally until her junior year at Scripps College, where she received a B.A. in music studying under Tom Flaherty, she grew up playing the piano and singing from a young age.  She then went on to study composition at Kunstuniversität Graz with Beat Furrer. Walton received an M.A. in music composition from Tulane University in 2018, where she studied with Rick Snow. She then went on to study Sonology at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She is currently a DMA candidate in music composition at Columbia University, where she has served as a Teaching Fellow in the subjects of music theory, music composition, and music history.