Renée Favand-See | Featured Artist
Renée Favand-See is a composer and soprano living in Portland, Oregon. Her works explore the music of words, natural and made environments, emotions and spiritual questions—especially delving into grief as a vehicle for individual and communal transformation. These investigations yield vocal music of all stripes, Musique Concrète-esque electronic pieces, and lyrically driven instrumental music cultivating relationships that unfold in the spaces between voices.
Significant projects include: First Flight and We Need Earth for Trio Triumphatrix and Voices of Ascension’s NYC production Astronautica; Ten full moons for Northwest Art Song; Only in falling for Resonance Ensemble; Suffer silently for fixed electronic media; Wie der Katz mit der Maus for fEARnoMUSIC; and Growing for Portland Piano International. Among her other commissions are works for Five Boroughs Music Festival, Lucy Shelton and Eighth Blackbird, Sequitur, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, American Opera Projects, Wet Ink Ensemble, and Outer Voices Festival. Other groups who have performed her music include: members of ICE; David Friend; The Julians; Friends of Rain; Electrogals; Del Sol String Quartet; Peabody Trio; and many singers, including Hai-Ting Chinn, Arwen Myers, Laura Beckel-Thoreson, Jesse Blumberg, Blythe Gaissert, Hannah Penn, Alissa Rose, and William Ferguson.
Renée has written chamber, orchestral, choral and electronic pieces, as well as music for video and dance, including collaborations with Ten Tiny Dances in Portland, TRIP Dance Theatre in Los Angeles, Group Motion in Philadelphia and video artist Christine Sciulli in New York City. Renée has also ventured into theater, with long-time friend and collaborator, Hai-Ting Chinn, with Science Fair, a staged vocal recital produced by HERE Arts Center in New York City.
She holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music, respectively. Her earliest compositional studies began at age twelve with The Walden School, a summer program for young musicians in Dublin, New Hampshire.
Renée currently teaches music composition and theory at Portland State University and Creative Musicians Retreat in New England.
Learn more about Renée at the links below:
Renée appears on these Resonance programs: