Emily Doolittle facts for kids

Emily Lenore Doolittle (born October 16, 1972) is a Canadian composer. She is also a zoomusicologist, which means she studies how animals and humans make music. Emily works as a research fellow and lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, Scotland.

Her music often gets ideas from old stories (folklore) and the natural world. People around the world have asked her to create music, and her pieces have been performed in many places. She is a member of the Scottish Music Centre and the Canadian Music Centre.

Life and Work

Emily grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She studied music at several universities, including Dalhousie University, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in the Netherlands, Indiana University Bloomington, and Princeton University. From 2008 to 2015, she was a music professor at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, USA.

Studying Animal Music

Emily is very interested in zoomusicology, which is the study of music made by animals and humans. She also loves the natural world. She has explored these interests in many of her musical works. She even wrote her doctoral paper at Princeton about it.

Emily has also worked with scientists who study birds. With cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch and others, she made an exciting discovery. They found that the song of the hermit thrush bird follows a special musical pattern called the overtone series. This is a pattern often found in human music.

Emily explains how her passion for animal song began: "I was studying in the Hague when a bird woke me up one morning. It sounded like human music and made me curious about animal song."

Musical Themes and Achievements

Other important ideas in Emily's music include storytelling, creating music with or for children, and using folklore. Her chamber opera, Jan Tait and the Bear, won a special grant in 2016. It was also chosen to be performed at the famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018.

Emily's work has won many awards. These include the Theodore Front Prize for her piece A Short, Slow Life in 2012. She has also received awards from ASCAP, the Joseph H. Bearns Prize, and the Sorel Organization. Many famous groups have asked her to compose music for them. These include the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, and the New York Youth Symphony.

List of Works

Emily Doolittle has composed many different types of music. Here are some examples of her works:

Chamber Music

Chamber music is written for a small group of instruments.

• 7 Duos for Bird or Strings (for violin and viola)
• Field Guide (for string trio)
• Four pieces about water (for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trombone, piano, violin, cello, and double bass)
• Sorex (a celebration of untamed shrews) (for two pianos)
• Woodwings (for a wind quintet)

Choral Music

Choral music is written for a choir, which is a group of singers.

• Dàn nan Ròn (for children's choir with flute and cello)
• Seal songs (for narrator, children's choir, and a small group of instruments)

Orchestral Music

Orchestral music is written for a large orchestra.

• Reedbird (for wind and brass instruments)
• A Short, Slow Life (for a soprano singer and orchestra)
• Sapling

Opera

An opera is a play where the words are sung to music.

• Jan Tait and the Bear (a chamber opera, which is a smaller opera)

Solo Music

Solo music is written for one instrument or voice.

• Aubade (for solo flute)
• Gliese 581 c (for solo piano)
• Music for Magpies (for viola da gamba, an old string instrument)

Vocal Music

Vocal music is written for singers, often with instruments.

• Airs of men long dead (for mezzo soprano singer and piano)
• Ruby-Throated Moment (for a high soprano singer)
• Social sounds from whales at night (for soprano singer and tape recording)

Recordings

Emily Doolittle's music has been recorded on albums. One of her albums is called all spring. It features her chamber music performed by the Seattle Chamber Players and their friends.