Roshanne Etezady still remembers the night in 1986 when she heard Philip Glass perform on Saturday Night Live and couldn’t quite place what she was hearing. It wasn’t pop. It wasn’t the classical music she knew. It was something else entirely — and the next day she beelined to the mall to buy the cassette. Three decades of composing later, that same hunger for music that resists easy categorization remains at the center of her work.
Etezady’s process centers the performers she’s writing for — their quirks, what excites them, things they’ve never quite gotten to do — and channels them into new musical ideas. It’s an approach that has produced music praised for being “fresh, effusive, and immediately likeable” (Fanfare Magazine) and acclaim for Etezady herself as a “promising and confident composer” (Detroit Free Press). In particular, she is drawn to wind ensembles and chamber groups for their often unabashed personality, openness to experimentation, and enthusiasm for new music. In works such as Diamond Rain for orchestra, Recurring Dreams for alto saxophone, violin, cello, and piano, or Forty-Eight Colors of the Full Moon for wind ensemble, her music often favors vivid gesture and a willingness to take risks at the edges, valuing honesty and vitality over polish for its own sake.
Her work has been commissioned and performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band, the United States Military Academy Band at West Point, eighth blackbird, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, among many others. Her work has been featured on the Naxos, Cedille, innova, and Summit labels, including eighth blackbird’s album Meanwhile, which won a Grammy in 2012.
Etezady currently serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where her teaching emphasizes blending craft with curiosity and developing an authentic artistic voice. She has been a composer-in-residence or guest artist at institutions across fifteen states and five countries. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Etezady writes fluently... in a fascinating mix of styles that makes use of a tapestry of tonal colors and a plethora of rhythmic textures that range from simple melodies to boogie woogie and clarinet pyrotechnics."
