Eva Kendrick is a composer, songwriter and vocalist. She writes in many genres including opera, chamber music, song cycles, electroacoustic music, and film music. She is very active in the Boston and surrounding music communities, serving as Music Director at First Parish Medfield and as music theory and voice teacher at the Community Music Center of Boston, where she is a composer-in-residence. She directs the thriving Eva Kendrick Voice Studio and is in demand as a freelance composer.
Eva has been commissioned by ensembles and organizations including the Atlanta-based Anon Ensemble, the Milton Chamber Choir, Dinosaur Annex, Rialto Arts, the New Gallery Concert Series, the Community Music Center of Boston Chamber Orchestra, and the Providence Mandolin Orchestra. She has written scores for filmmakers in New York, Boston, Tempe, and Providence. Eva enjoys collaborating with poets and has set poems by Kathleen Spivack, Naomi Shihab Nye, Paul Turner, and Laurie Robertson-Lorant, producing large-scale song cycles and choral works. Other famous poets she has set song cycles and choral pieces to include e.e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman.
Venues for Eva's original music include the EBELL of Los Angeles, Brandeis University, Wimberly Theatre,WaterFire Providence, the Magdalena Project (USA), Mary K. Hail Music Mansion, Pasadena Balcony Theatre, Pickman Hall, Allen Hall, First Night Providence, and the radio stations WOMR and WRBB. Festivals and concert series include the International Alliance of Women in Music 2011 Congress; Alive By Her Own Hand: Female Composers As Performers of Their Work; Longy School of Music’s SeptemberFEST Series; Boston’s Birth of a Musical Festival; Summer Shorts Festival; Longy Alumnae Concert Series; the Longfellow National Park Concert Series, and the Arts in the Village Concert Series.
In 2014, Kendrick was awarded the Judith Lang Zaimont Prize by the International Alliance of Women in Music New Music Search for her chamber piece Juntos. She also received the Marilla McDill Prize for Teaching Excellence and Community Service from the Community Music Center of Boston. Other awards include 14 ASCAPLU$ Awards from 2000 to the present, a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum, a Longy School of Music Scholarship, a USA Today Award, and the Robert J. Graves Music Scholarship from the Chopin Club of Providence. In 2010 and 2011, she received Honorable Mentions in the Judith Lang Zaimont category of the International Alliance of Women in Music (IAWM) New Music Search. Eva is a member of ASCAP, the IAWM, and the Unitarian Universalist Musicians Network. She has been featured on the SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States) Web site and is a contributor to the IAWM newsletter.
Kendrick is very active within the Unitarian-Universalist Musicians Network as a composer, performer and student. She is currently a first-year candidate the UUA Music Leadership Certification Program. She is a noted composer in the Harvard Square Library list of Notable UU Composers and has composed several spiritual, uplifting and non-denominational hymns, including her Hymns for People choral series. Her pieces have been perofrmed by UU, UCC and congregational churches in many states, from Conecticut to Hawaii and many in between. In 2013 and 2014, she performed in front of more than 3,500 people at the Unitarian-Universalist General Assemblies in Louisville, KY and in Providence, RI as a songleader, accompanist and in a vocal quartet.
A professional vocalist, Eva has performed with light opera companies in New England and California and has won several awards, including first, second and third prizes in NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) Competitions in Providence and Boston. Voice teachers include Shigemi Matsumoto, Noel Velasco, and Karyl Ryczek. She frequently performs works by other local composers such as Chris Eastburn, Elizabeth Knight, and Miriam Miller. She also writes for and performs with a contemporary folk band, Anne’s Cordial.
Eva is the founder of the Eva Kendrick Voice Studio in Providence, RI and Medfield, MA. She is an enthusiastic advocate for her students, ensuring they know about upcoming auditions, recitals and competitions. In the past year, students of hers have been finalists in and garnered awards from the Rhode Island National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Musical Theatre Song Festival; Boston NATS Musical Theatre Song Festival; the Boston Lyric Opera Aria Contest for Teens, and the David Lapin Competition. Her student Marcus D'Angelo just completed a run performing on Broadway in Matilda the Musical.
She received a B.M. in Vocal Performance from Rhode Island College and attended the Summer Training Congress at the Tony Award-winning American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. She received an M.M. in Composition with Distinction from the Longy School of Music in 2006, where she studied with composer John Howell Morrison.
Her musical comedy Le Bistro Cafe had its East Coast Premiere in the fall to three sold out performances in Medfield last year. Her chamber opera Emily received its Midwestern premiere by the Thomspn Street Opera Company in Louisville, KY in May, 2014. Her short opera The Break-Up,commissioned by San Francisco Opera Bass-Baritone William O'Neil, premiered in Massachusetts in January, 2015, and was also performed during the Contemporary Theatre Company Springboard Festival in Wakefield, RI. Her new full-length musical "Operator" will premiere in May, 2015.