Beth Denisch

Who is Beth Denisch?

Beth Denisch is an American composer. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from North Texas State University in Denton, Texas, and an MM and a DMA from Boston University, where her teachers in composition were John Harbison and Bernard Rands. She has taught at UMass Dartmouth and Northeastern University. She is currently Professor of Composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

In 1996 she founded the New England chapter of the American Composers Forum, and she served as their director until 2005. She presently serves as Co-Chair of Gender Research in Music and Education International.

Denisch's music has had many prominent performances, and she has received notable prizes and commissions. For instance in 2002, the Handel and Haydn Society performed her "Sorrow and Tenderness" as part of a collaborative youth concert at Brockton High School in Massachusetts. Her "Fire Mountain Intermezzo" for string orchestra was performed by Chamber Orchestra Kremlin in Moscow and New York City, after it was one of the winners of their Homage to Mozart competition. Writing in The New York Times, Bernard Holland noted the work's "fierce rhythmic patterns", and that while rooted in tonality, it "snarled and bit with dissonance."