Biography

Kyle Bartlett was born in 1971 in Los Angeles.  She began her studies as a flutist, later adding drums and then composition.  She earned the Bachelor’s Diploma from the Longy School of Music, where she studied with flutist Christopher Krueger and composer Herman Weiss, and received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where her primary instructors were George Crumb and Richard Wernick, in 1999.  She also studied in London with the Scottish composer James Dillon.

Bartlett’s music is informed by a great fascination with timbre and the logic of dreams.  She is interested in exposing and developing the seemingly irrational aspects of the creative process along with the viscerality of performance.  Recent projects include a piano trio performed from underneath diaphanous white shrouds, representing the transcendence of human alienation; a work for chamber ensemble and actress which used highly dramatized poetry to mirror and amplify the expression of the music; and a piano quartet inspired (very distantly) by British ‘60s rock.

Bartlett is a founding member of the well-respected new-music ensemble, counter)induction.  She also  had a long-standing relationship with the Antwerp-based Champ d’Action, which has performed many of her compositions and presented portrait concerts of her work.  She is an active educator, teaching music theory, flute performance, and Orff Schulwerk at Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she lives.

Biography