BIOGRAPHY

Lorraine is a composer, producer, writer, performer, and collaborator who began her professional career as a member of the Peanut Gallery on NBC’s Howdy Doody Show in Manhattan. She was trained as a concert pianist but after several years as a competitor she realized that her preferences were in the fields of composition and writing.

She studied TV and Film Scoring at UCLA and wrote the original music for the award winning documentary We Are Arabbers.

Her original work was featured by the Arista Hip Hop Artists, Naughty By Nature, on their album 19 Naughty Nine and she was also a composer and performer for the NY Times critically acclaimed New Wave band, The Lines.

Ms Whittlesey is a genre-surfing composer who integrates traditional styles such as classical, blues, gospel, pop, and others into choral and instrumental works. Technology and traditional ethnic instruments (such as the Chinese pipa and erhu, and the microtonal theremin) are also incorporated. The common denominator of the compositions is attention to melodic line and frequent use of polyphony.

She was the Composer-in Residence for the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and the Yale Gordon Artist-in-Residence @ McDaniel College.

She and her long time performance partner, Joyce J. Scott, have performed numerous times, most notably for their award winning (Best of Baltimore) original performance series, “Ebony & Irony.”

Her production work includes “Parallel Lives” which featured famous Baltimoreans showing off their hidden talents and she was the musical director for a tribute to Ruby Glover and Ethel Ennis at Center Stage. Lorraine produces many of her own shows, and has worked with the Archie Edwards Blues Band and The Dunbar Jazz Ensemble.

She has received Maryland State Arts Council awards for composition and performance.

Between 1993 and 1996 she was Project Director of the Computer Music Consort @ the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University.

She has been an invited speaker and panelist at numerous institutions such as the Maryland Institute College of Art, Princeton University, The Johns Hopkins University, Towson University, and Stevenson College.

Ms Whittlesey’s original and commissioned works have been performed by the Baltimore Symphony and Chorus, at Weill Hall @ Carnegie Hall and many other international venues.

She was Keynote Speaker and Curator at the Johns Hopkins University Digital Media Center for the Symposium titled “From Tubes and Transformers to Chips and Transistors: A History of Electronic and Computer Music.”

Download Lorraine Whittlesey’s CV