Armington Lane Publishing

“Ms. Whitten Thomas has a conservative but imaginative harmonic vocabulary. The chords were quite beautiful and the progressions made sense, something very rare in 21st -century music. This was very skillful choral writing.”
          - Harry Saltzman, New York Concert Review (from her 2007 performance of Choral de Bêtes at Zankel Hall)

Having grown up in New England, Ms. Whitten Thomas's music is greatly influenced by the natural beauty and serenity of the Northeast. She also draws from the excitement of city life and the vibrant arts community of her current home in Los Angeles, California. Reflective of her life experiences, her compositions are an intricate fusion of the traditional and innovative, of the contemplative and dynamic.

Ms. Whitten Thomas received her Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Middlebury College in 2002 and her Master of Music degree in composition from the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music in 2005. She has studied with composers Su Lian Tan, Morten Lauridsen, Donald Crockett, and Erica Muhl. Her works have been performed by such organizations as Voices of Ascension, the Ann Arbor Cantata Singers, Vanguard Voices, the Middlebury College Orchestra and Chamber Singers, The Middlebury College Community Chorus, the USC Thornton Symphony, the USC Chamber Singers, the USC Apollo Men’s Choir, and the Pasadena City College Chamber Singers.

Recently, she was awarded 2^nd place in the 2010 National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award for her song cycle In the Garret. She has also been awarded an honorable mention for No la debemos dormir in the Freudig Singers' 2010 composition competition. As a finalist in the 2007 Sorel Organization’s composition competition, her choral work Choral de Bêtes was premiered by Voices of Ascension, under the direction of Dennis Keene at Carnegie Hall. She was invited back to Carnegie Hall in October of 2008 to hear Voices of Ascension perform Take Peace. In December of 2008, she was awarded an honorable mention for her choral piece Snow Change as part of the Vanguard Premieres competition. She was a runner-up for Sacra/Profana’s 2009 composition award, a finalist for the Choral Arts Ensemble’s 25th anniversary commission, and a finalist for the 2006 National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award. In 2005, her Theme and Variations was selected for the USC New Music for Orchestra competition.

 Ms. Whitten Thomas’s commissions include a new work for Melodia Women’s Choir of NYC scheduled for performance in 2011. The USC Apollo Men’s Choir commissioned a work with settings of Longfellow poems entitled Three Songs of Life, which was premiered at USC’s Newman Hall in April, 2009. In 2006, she was the recipient of a commission for choir and organ by the First Baptist Church of Worcester to launch their annual competition for new sacred music. The Raising of Lazarus was premiered at the church on April 30th of that year.

photo by Diana Whitten