Bridget Kibbey, harp

Winner, 2007 CAG Competition

Recipient, 2004 Avery Fisher Career Grant

www.bridgetkibbey.com

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Harpist Bridget Kibbey’s vital performances display the varied and unique abilities of this fantastic instrument, ranging from baroque to folk, to collaborations with singer/songwriters and world musicians, to commissions of new works from today’s composers. As hailed by The New York Times, "…she made it seem as though her instrument had been waiting all its life to explode with the gorgeous colors and energetic figures she was getting from it." Ms. Kibbey has been further lauded for her “blazing power and finesse,” as “a performer who seems to revel in the sheer physicality required to coax a vast range of exacting expression” and “a delight to watch and hear.”

Her debut solo disc, Love is Come Again, was named by Time Out New York as one of 2007’s Top Ten Recordings. She can also be heard on Deutsche Grammophon with Dawn Upshaw, in a recording of Berio's Folk Songs and Osvaldo Golijov's Ayre. Ms. Kibbey’s second solo album, Caja de Musica (Music Box), is scheduled for release in 2012. Featuring new works from Paquito D’Rivera, Du Yun, Susie Ibarra and David Bruce, among others, this CD spotlights composers who have ventured to the US and pays tribute to the cultures they have brought with them. 

Ms. Kibbey is the winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, Astral Artists Auditions and Premier Prix at the International Chamber Music Competition of Arles, France (with flutist Julietta Curenton). Most recently, she became a member of CMS II with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

2011-2012 season highlights include opening night with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, collaborations with Edgar Meyer and members of the Society and with Christopher Rouse at Carnegie Hall on its Making Music series, as well as with a variety of artists/ensembles, including Dawn Upshaw, Claire Chase, Cho-Liang Lin, Sasha Cooke, the Jupiter Quartet and the Maya Trio.  Solo and chamber concerts include Boston’s Gardner Museum, the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, Da Camera of Houston and at the New England Conservatory of Music. Ms. Kibbey also appears as concerto soloist with the Illinois and Modesto Symphonies and joins Vermont’s Manchester Chamber Orchestra on a concerto tour of the northeast. Her festival appearances in the same season include Chamber Music Northwest, Ojai Music Festival, Look and Listen Festival and Mostly Mozart.

A champion for her instrument who leads the harp to new places, Ms. Kibbey performed the American premiere of Sebastian Currier's Broken Minuets for Harp and Strings with Symphony in C in Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, the New York premiere of Elliott Carter's Mosaic in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall for the composer's 100th Birthday, Stockhausen’s Freude (with harpist June Han) on the Works & Process series at New York’s Guggenheim Museum. Ms. Kibbey has shared an evening with singer/improvising cellist Emily Hope Price at (Le) Poisson Rouge and has recorded with The National and Antony and the Johnsons.

The harpist has been a featured soloist with the Juilliard Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Israel Youth Philharmonic, Princeton Symphony, Haddonfield Symphony and America’s Dream Chamber Artists, among others. Her solo performances have been broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today, A & E’s Breakfast with the Arts and on WQXR.  She has also been profiled in SYMPHONY, MUSO and Harp Column magazines.

As an orchestral musician Bridget Kibbey has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.  She was also one of a hand-selected group of emerging artists to perform in the Zankel Band for the inaugural concert in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall under the direction of John Adams.  She is the founding harpist of the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Metropolis Ensemble. Ms. Kibbey holds both Bachelor and Master of Music of Music degrees from The Juilliard School where she completed studies with Nancy Allen. She is on the harp faculties of Bard Conservatory, New York University and The Juilliard School Pre-College program.