About Dana Kaufman

     Hailed as “whirlwind” (Gramophone), “ingeniously derived” (Sequenza21), and “dramatic…and powerfully funny” (Observer), the works of composer-librettist Dana Kaufman have been heard in North America, Europe, and Asia. Her music has been featured at venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall, New York Opera Fest, Contemporary Music Center of Milan, the National Gugak Center (South Korea), Seattle Opera’s Tagney Jones Hall, The Tank, Jordan Hall, Boston New Music Festival, National Opera Week, Hartford Opera Theater, Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall (Croatia), Ravinia Festival, Lowbrow Opera Collective, and Opera on Tap Chicago; it has been commissioned by GRAMMY-winning pianist Nadia Shpachenko, the Louisville Ballet, Carlow Arts Festival (Ireland), Synchromy, the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, Paradox Opera, and many others.

A Fulbright Research Fellow in Estonia, National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, winner of an OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Composers: Discovery Grant (supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation), and four-time American Prize honoree, Kaufman has given lectures at the LA Opera, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Leuphana Universität Lüneberg, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the Music by Women Festival as a frequent speaker on gender diversity in composition and queer opera. Kaufman received her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Russian (magna cum laude) from Amherst College and her Master of Music in Composition from New England Conservatory. She earned her Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from University of Miami Frost School of Music, where she was the first Frost student to be a Dean’s Fellow and of which she is now a Centennial Medalist. She is Associate Professor in Music Composition at University of California, Riverside.