For pioneering NYC composer, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist Kitty Brazelton, music is personal, and the personal is universal. The irrepressible Brazelton has always championed music’s power to unite—across genre, across tradition, across language. As a teenager studying Tzotzil, a language spoken by the Maya in the remote mountains above the Yucatan, Brazelton began to believe in a kind of universal language that would transcend boundaries. This spirit of radical inclusivity has propelled her dazzling work across decades and into the now, shapeshifting from 70’s psychedelic chamber-folk Musica Orbis and ‘80s anthemic new wave Hide the Babies to 9-piece electroacoustic Dadadah and ‘90s cyberpunk trio What is it Like to Be a Bat?

A Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition (Columbia University), Kitty Brazelton lives in New York City’s East Village, and has been a professor of composition at Bennington College since 2001.