Visiting Assistant Professor
Sarah Rimkus is an award-winning American composer of choral, vocal and chamber works.She brings a wide range of influences to her music, from ars antiqua and ars nova polyphony to Balkanand Scandinavian folk traditions and many other sources. Her work often explores issues such as communication, belonging, and relationship to the environment through use of musical layering and contradiction. Her music has been described as “challenging yet attractive” and “always powerful and well-judged,” with a language that “ranges from uncluttered lyrical poignancy to denser textures that suggest a holy clamor.”
Her choral and vocal works have been commissioned and performed extensively across the United States, the United Kingdom and beyond by ensembles such as The Crossing, The Esoterics, Peabody Camerata, and The Gesualdo Six. Her works have been professionally recorded by ensembles on both sides of the Atlantic, featured on BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, and published by GIA Publications, Walton Music, and See-a-dot Publications. Much of her inspiration in her choral works come from her inventive text choices, from scientific writing to multi-lingual translations of sacred texts and many other sources. She has also written instrumental works for performers and organizations including The Ligeti Quartet, Cheltenham Music Festival, and Red Note Ensemble. Her work has been internationally recognized through awards such as the ASCAP Morton Gould Award and the ASCAP Foundation Leonard Bernstein award.
She completed her PhD in music composition at the University of Aberdeen (UK) in 2019, and
earned her BM in composition magna cum laude in 2013 at the University of Southern California, where she developed her love of working with text and the voice while studying with Morten Lauridsen and Stephen Hartke.
Prior to serving on the faculty at Sewanee, she served as a visiting assistant professor of music at Michigan Technological University. She is excited to be joining the Sewanee community along with her husband, fellow composer Thomas LaVoy, their daughter Marin, and their two cats Worf and Kira.
Areas of expertise: choral & vocal composition, instrumental composition
