Alexandra Gardner

Alexandra Gardner (born 1967) is an American contemporary composer based in Baltimore, Maryland. Her music employs diverse acoustic instrumentation and electronics, drawing on minimalist and modernist influences as well as extra-musical sources and sounds. Critics note her work for its blend of contemplative and expressive qualities, clear structure and unexpected evolution, and complex rhythms. In a 2007 New Yorker essay, music critic Alex Ross placed Gardner among a “vital group of composers” creating a “new kind of interstitial music” that blurs genre boundaries. Gardner’s work has been performed in solo, chamber and orchestral contexts and as scoring for dance, theater and visual art performances, at venues including Kennedy Center, Aspen Music Festival, Centro de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Strathmore Music Center and Symphony Space, among others. Gardner’s music is recorded on the Innova, Ars Harmonica, and Naxos labels. Early life and career Alexandra Gardner was born in 1967 and raised in Washington, DC. She studied percussion (focusing on marimba), composition and electronic music with Charles Barbour, Annea Lockwood and Richard Edward Wilson at Vassar College. In