| Country | United States of America |
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| Date of birth | 1975 |
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GILDA LYONS (www.gildalyons.com), composer, vocalist, and visual artist, combines elements of renaissance, neo-baroque, spectral, folk, agitprop Music Theater, and extended vocalism to create works of uncompromising emotional honesty and melodic beauty. Tom Strini of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel describes her "Nahuatl Hymn to the All-Mother" for treble choir (Clarion CLCD-936), commissioned by The Milwaukee Choral Artists, as "hair-raising, yet elegant [with] slides, dips, yips and yelps amid ceremonial intensity." Ms. Lyons has received commissions from American Opera Projects, The ASCAP Foundation / Charles Kingsford Fund, Amy Pivar Dances, ComposersCollaborative Inc., Finisterra Piano Trio, Fort Greene Park Conservancy, The Seasons Music Festival, Paul Sperry, Sweet Plantain String Quartet, Two Sides Sounding, and The Walt Whitman Project, among others. Composer-in-Residencies include the Seasons Music Festival in Washington State and the Hartford Women Composers Festival. An active vocalist and fierce advocate of contemporary music, Ms. Lyons has commissioned, premiered, and workshopped new vocal works by dozens of composers. Of her recent performance in Daron Hagen's "Shining Brow" (Buffalo Philharmonic/Falletta) (Naxos) David Shengold of Opera, UK writes "Gilda Lyons’s clear soprano compels admiration." Her music is published by Schott, E.C. Schirmer and also available through Burning Sled Music.
