Photos by Muriel Steinke

Harriet Steinke is a composer currently based in Detroit, Michigan. She is an active collaborator in the Detroit-area and in the midwest, receiving recent premieres at local venues such as the Kerrytown Concert House (Ann Arbor, MI), the Detroit Symphony Orchestra CUBE, and most recently, the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Rivera Court, where her piece for six pianos was premiered by the NYC-based piano sextet Grand Band.

Passionate about collaboration, she works closely with many of her artist-friends, assisting with various projects, concert series', initiatives, and performances. She currently organizes the Detroit Composers' Project, an outgrowth of some local collaborations, centered on facilitating performances of new music in the city of Detroit among area-based performers and composers. In addition to these various projects, she also works in events & operations for Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings and the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival. 

Harriet’s work has been programmed throughout the U.S. and abroad, including recent performances with the 7Songwriters Series (NYC), the Third Place Concert Series (Ann Arbor, MI), the Ann Arbor SongSlam, Classical Revolution Cleveland, the DIA’s Friday Night Live Series, Strange Beautiful Music 2018 (Detroit, MI), the American Composers Forum 2018 showcase (Minneapolis, MN), the Norfolk New Music Workshop (Norfolk, CT), and Weekend of Chamber Music (Jeffersonville, NY). Her choral music is published by both Colla Voce Music and Hal Leonard Corporation, and has been performed by the Circle City Chamber Choir (Indianapolis, IN), the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective (NYC), Coral Paulistano (São Paulo, Brazil), and the Dublin-based choir, Dulciana, who have performed her carol “Stille Nacht,” every year since 2016.

She has received recognition from the the American Prize and the American Composers Forum, and fellowships with the Weekend of Chamber Music, and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. In 2019, she is participating in the Soundstreams Emerging Composers Workshop (Toronto, ON), where she will work with the Rolston String Quartet; she will also be a 2019 fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Harriet studied Music Composition and English Literature at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. She did additional study in harmony and counterpoint at the EAMA-Nadia Boulanger Institute in Paris, France as well as German language and literature at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Germany. Her primary teachers were Frank Felice, Ronald Caltabiano, and Michael Schelle.

“Thanks for visiting my site!!” -Harriet