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Carla Kihlstedt has played the violin for most of her years on this planet. It is the vehicle that has brought her through many approaches to music-making from her beginnings in the classical world, through various music schools — Peabody Institute, Oberlin and San Francisco Conservatories — and on to her present hydra-headed musical life. She is a composer, an improviser, a singer, and a member of several ongoing projects, including 2 Foot Yard, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat, The Book of Knots, and Causing A Tiger, each of which has its own very particular and distinct logic. She has written scores for dance and theater companies (inkBoat, The Joe Goode Performance Group, Flyaway Productions), and on her new label, 12 Cups, has just released a cd of several such scores written with Matthias Bossi and Dan Rathbun (Ravish and Other Tales for the Stage).
In 2009, Carla will put several new recordings into the world: a new Minamo cd (Tzadik), debut cds of Cosa Brava, Causing a Tiger, Necessary Monsters, and Lisa Bielawa's Double Violin Concerto. Thanks to a generous grant from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, she will also be working on a new piece for the ROVA Saxophone Quartet.