From the 8BC to Carnegie Hall: The improbable journey of composer Rain Worthington by Photographer/Journalist Bob Krasner.
Composer’s Studio Podcast: Rain Worthington – Tapping into the pre-verbal Language
The Communicative Mystery of Instrumental Music by Rain Worthington – Sonograma Magazine
Universality of Emotion: Ona Jarmalavičiūtė talks to American composer Rain Worthington – Classical Music Daily
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
Performances of Worthington’s compositions have spanned the globe from Brazil to Iceland, Cyprus to Korea, Italy to 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.
Self-taught in composition, she has written works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, duos, solos and miniatures. Beginning with an affinity for Stravinsky’s orchestral music and Satie’s piano pieces, mixed with 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. Her 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.”
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 love of orchestral music and taught herself notation and orchestration. In a Pizzicato Magazine review, Remy Franck states
[Worthington] draws her inspiration from the totality of music, in a fusion of styles and eras. This is the only way to create music that carries the listener as far as yearning can reach.”
Since 2010, Navona Records has released Worthington’s music. In March 2022, her second full album of works, PASSAGES THROUGH TIME was released to critical acclaim. Her first solo orchestral album DREAM VAPORS also received uniformly positive reviews.
“The size of the orchestra ranges between smaller to more full, yet it is the impact of the composing in every case that stands out as full of dark, burnished color. She is a master of her own orchestral palette.” – Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
In 2022 her Dream Vapors Suite of three works, received a World Premiere by the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra in Yerevan, Armenia.
2021 orchestral performances included the U.S. Premiere of Shredding Glass for orchestra; the European and U.S. Premieres of Within Deep Currents for string orchestra and the Croatian Premiere of In Passages for violin soloist and string orchestra.
2020 performances of her orchestral works included Still Motion performed at Carnegie Hall February 2020 on the DCINY concert series and Yet Still Night at the TUTTI Festival at Denison University.
The World Premiere of Shredding Glass was performed by the Orquestra Sinfonica de Limeira, June 2019 in Brazil. She was guest at Missouri State University 2016 and 2017 for MSU Symphony orchestral world premieres of Tracing a Dream and In Passages. Subsequent orchestral premieres of In Passages were presented in Italy and Brazil in 2018.
2020 commissions included a new violin/piano work, Balancing on the Edge of Shadows for violinist Audrey Wright and a work for string orchestra, Turning Tides for the Portland Youth Philharmonic.
She currently is a Advocacy Committee member of the IAWM Board and served as Artistic Administrator and Composer Advocate for the New York Women Composers 2006-2021.
(Rain requested that all proceeds from purchases of the Dream Vapors album to be donated through PARMA Recordings to the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (a research 501(c)(3) public charity).
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
