ABOUT

American composer Heather Gilligan strives to write music both edgy and lyrical. Her fresh, organic style is honest, direct, and compassionate while exploring the limits of emotion from humor to anguish. 

Growing up in a Pennsylvania home where music was synonymous with activism, cultural competence was a family value to her parents, both teachers. Her father would play Draft Dodger Rag or Charlie on the MTA on his guitar, while Heather, her mother, and her sister Tara would sing along. Hearing these authentically activist songs during such formidable years influenced both girls. Now, Tara is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and engages in education and reform of the prison system while Heather, in her music, seeks opportunities to write about issues related to women’s rights, voting rights, and social equity, using music as a platform for political and human engagement.

As a young pianist, Heather started playing at age five and accompanied the chorus as early as elementary school. As she approached her college years, she found a balance between piano and field hockey. Although she showed creative gifts as a young pianist, she decided to pursue science, and in 1996 she graduated with a BS in Chemistry from Lehigh University. As a music minor at Lehigh, she and a fellow music student co-presented the department’s first senior recital. Her composition teacher, Paul Salerni, mentored her toward continuing music after college – and so, as a research chemist in a lab north of Boston, Heather continued her piano and chamber music studies each evening. When her commitment to music eventually superseded her interest in chemistry, she pursued full-time graduate study in music, a decision that profoundly changed her professional trajectory.

Heather began a master’s program in Piano Performance at the Longy School of Music until a “composition for performers” class inspired one more major change in her path. Longy became her first compositional laboratory, and it was there that she began composing seriously, letting her identity as a composer take the most prominent place in her self-identity. She completed her MM in Composition in 2002 and soon began her DMA in composition at Boston University, where she received numerous scholarships and awards. Heather reveled in the academic rigor of BU’s composition program and began honing her compositional voice in an environment that felt ideal as a place where her enthusiasm for problem-solving and research could be nourished as much as her creative and musical aspirations. 

During her last semester at BU, newlywed Heather had a health crisis that put everything into perspective. After waking up one day unable to lift her head, she learned that she had a tear in her dura mater, the membrane cushioning the brain and spinal cord. Immobile and unable to sit upright, Heather wrote her dissertation flat on her back. During this time, Heather was supported in a myriad of ways by family, friends, and colleagues, who together created a culture of care and understanding in her life. This level of support and compassion, paired with Heather’s deep-rooted values of equity and fairness, influenced Heather’s own educational philosophy. At Keene State, she aims to connect with her students individually and support them where they are. 

Two years after tearing her dura mater and a year after earning her doctorate in composition from BU, a successful surgery enabled Heather to regain her mobility and her normalcy. In 2009 she began an appointment at Keene State College, where she was able to focus on building a program that would grow into a “magnetic sanctuary” for new music. At Keene State, Heather coordinates the areas of composition, theory, and aural skills. In a department whose student demographic is high in both first-generation learners and members of the LGBTQ+ community, she and her colleagues relish the opportunity to make a conservatory-level education accessible to diverse populations. Considering her background and values, such a setting is ideal for Heather; her teaching pairs with her music, which both aim to promote equity and call out unfairness. In her position, she also promotes the arts through her work in undergraduate research, elevating music, dance, theatre, and art as valid research fields and increasing opportunities for funding and fellowships for students. 

Over the years, Heather has seen her musical career blossom through her writing. Her successful album of vocal chamber music with soprano Margot Rood, released by Albany Records in 2017, was described by Boston’s Jonathan Blumhofer (The Arts Fuse) as “a new album that capably demonstrates that the art song is not only alive and well but thriving in the early decades of the 21st century.” Critic Doug DeLoach (Creative Loafing) named the album among the top five albums of 2017. She was recently the featured composer at Truman State University’s 2023 North Star Music Festival in Kirksville, Missouri, where the festival orchestra premiered her new 4-movement commissioned work for orchestra titled Movements in Motion.  Her 2021 commission with the Atlanta-based Kinnara Ensemble, Southern Dissonance: Portraits of a New South, sets 12 songs for vocal quartet and percussion that focus on themes of voting rights.  That work was recently recognized with a “Finalist Honorable Mention” in the 2023 American Prize, Vocal Chamber Music Division.  She has won several awards over the past few years, including her 2021 work Rhapsody for violin and piano, which won 3rd place in the 2023 American Prize competition, Instrumental Chamber Music Division; her woodwind quintet, Six of One, which was chosen for performance at the March 2022 Women Composer’s Festival of Hartford and 2023 Concerts on the Slope series in Brooklyn; her song cycle, Living in Light, which won the Los Angeles-based Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra’s 2019 Call for Scores (a contest that accepted 2,200 entries across 90 countries); and her work for soprano and string quartet, Battlegrounds, which was named as a Semi-Finalist in the 2019 American Prize, Vocal Chamber Music Division.  In 2019, her song "I'm a Girl. What's your superpower?" won second place in the NYC SongSLAM Festival and she was a Call for Scores winner of the Boston-based Juventas New Music Ensemble in both 2018 and 2019.

Previously, Heather’s choral work, I’ll see you in the Morning, was premiered in 2014 at Carnegie Hall during the annual New York Choral Festival. She was featured in the Washington D.C. International Music Festival, which premiered her orchestral and wind symphony works at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2015 and 2016. 

Heather has collaborated with a host of vocalists including Margot Rood, Sarah Brailey, Emily Marvosh, Christina English, Ann Moss, Stephanie Weiss, Sara Bielanski, and Brenna Wells. She has worked with instrumentalists including flutists Sarah Brady, Orlando Cela, Robin Matathias, Caroline Shaffer Robin, Alex Tucker Slap, and Kathryn Shaffer; clarinetists Todd Brunel and Stephanie Jenkins; saxophonists Craig Sylvern and Ken Radnofsky; pianists Christina Wright-Ivanova and Damien Francoeur-Krzyzek; trumpeters Seelan Manickam and Jonah Kappraff; percussionists Christopher Swist and Caleb Herron; violinist Paul Grobey; cellist Patrick Owen; and harpists Franziska Huhn and Alix Raspé Gray. She has written for performance organizations including Zenith Ensemble, Kinnara Ensemble, Apple Hill String Quartet, Lorelei Ensemble, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Arneis String Quartet, the Chamber Singers of Keene, the Boston University Percussion Ensemble, and numerous ensembles at KSC. 

Heather currently lives in Keene, New Hampshire with her partner, Alan, and her 13-year-old daughter, Gretchen.