“There is a deep interiority to this music . . . Worthington has an instantly recognizable sound, an austere sensuality not quite like anyone else . . . a composer of considerable imagination, emotional expressiveness, and poetic sensibility.” – American Record Guide
“She has the ability to state her compositional case to us directly, as it were, in absolutely concrete if mystical terms. She somehow makes clear to us how we experience the transitional, impermanent and ever shifting quality of a later modernist world.” – Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Reviews
Self-taught in composition, impulses for new pieces have ranged from the sounds of NYC trucks backing up late in the night, to the two-note expression of a sigh, to a dream of a careening bike ride through dark fog.
Performances of Rain Worthington’s compositions have spanned the globe from Brazil to Iceland to Armenia, with premieres in Tokyo, Oxford University, and Delhi Music Society in India. Her work takes “. . . ideas of American musical style to a new place – like a walk in a familiar, yet very different park” – Chamber Music magazine. Her catalog includes works for orchestra, mixed chamber ensembles, violin duo, solo marimba and even a miniature for oud.
With a strong childhood memory of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” an affinity for Satie’s piano music, and a love the allure of Middle-Eastern modal music that led her to travels in Greece, Egypt and Turkey, Rain has always followed her own musical instincts. She first began composing solo piano pieces, before learning music notation, and performed her works from memory in fellow artists’ lofts in Soho and at The Kitchen. With the downtown NYC club scene serving as her conservatory, Worthington led two bands and performed at CBGB’s, the Pyramid, Roulette, and PS 122.
Inspired by the energy of the contemporary classical scene, she pursued her fascination with orchestral music and taught herself notation and orchestration. Her orchestral writing has been described in the IAWM Journal as “a fusion of styles—ancient, medieval sounds expressed via modality and open sonorities, modernist minimalist ostinato, and classical approaches to basic ideas—to capture components of the human experience.”
In 2016 Navona Records released Worthington’s solo CD of orchestral works Dream Vapors – selected works for orchestra to critical acclaim. She was a guest composer at Missouri State University 2016 and 2017 for two MSU Symphony premieres of her orchestral works, “Tracing a Dream,” and “In Passages.” In 2018, Maestro Claudio Scimone and I Solisti Veneti presented the European premiere of In Passages, and the South American premiere was performed at V Encontro Internacional de Cordas Festival in Brazil. 2019 PARMA Recordings’ releases included In Passages” recorded by the Croatian Chamber Orchestra with conductor, Miran Vaupotić and violin soloist, Mojca Ramušćak, violin soloist on BENEATH THE TIDE; and Full Circle recorded by the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, Petr Vronský, conductor, & Petr Nouzovský, cello soloist on PRISMA Vol 2. 2019 also brought the World Premiere of Shredding Glass performed by the Orquestra Sinfônica de Limeira, with conductor Rodrigo Müller in Brazil.
Conductor Miran Vaupotić and Distinguished Concerts International NY (DCINY) selected Still Motion for the “Perpetual Light” concert at Carnegie Hall/Stern Auditorium February 16, 2020.
(The composer has directed that all proceeds from the purchase of the Dream Vapors album to be donated through PARMA Recordings to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (a research 501(c)(3) public charity).
On Spotify
Listen to more of Rain’s story on the Cadenza two-part webcast with David Osenberg, producer and host, WWFM-The Classical Network
Cadenza- Rain Worthington, composer Part 1
Cadenza- Rain Worthington, composer Part 2
