Libby Larsen

Elizabeth Brown "Libby" Larsen (born December 24, 1950) is an American composer. Along with composer Stephen Paulus, she is a co-founder of the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum.

A former holder of the Papamarkou Chair at John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Larsen has also held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.

Libby Larsen was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the third of five daughters in the family. At the age of three, Libby and her family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Her first musical experience dates from the time when she was three years old. She observed her older sister's piano lessons at home; later, she imitated what she had heard. Her formal music education began at the Saint Joseph of Carondelet nuns at Christ the King School. All students sang Gregorian Chant and learned to sight-read using moveable ‘do’ solfege. The rhythmic flexibility and prosody of text Larsen learned in chant showed her that there is freedom in music, a concept that would prove to be very influential in her future compositions. In addition to her classical training, Larsen's father was an amateur clarinetist in a Dixieland band, and her mother played boogie-woogie on the record player, giving her a multifarious and very American musical background.

Larsen attended the University of Minnesota for both her undergraduate and graduate work. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theory and Composition in 1971, a Masters of Arts degree in Composition in 1975, and a PhD in Theory and Composition in 1978. Throughout her studies at university, she studied composition with Dominick Argento, Paul Fetler and Eric Stokes. In 1975, Larsen married her husband, James Reece, whom she met at university.

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