Lucy Shirley is a composer currently based in Iowa City, IA. Her works are polystylistic and playful, often focusing on personal experience and aspects of the human voice. Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, Shirley’s earliest musical influences were gleaned from a deep obsession with Broadway musicals and long car rides listening to her mom’s mixtapes of classic Americana. She often still finds herself incorporating aspects of theatricality and folk-inspired melodies into her current music-making.
Shirley obtained her BM from the University of Indianapolis, where she studied with John Berners, and her MM from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she studied with Chen Yi, Yotam Haber, and Zhou Long. She is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at the University of Iowa where she studies with David Gompper. Her honors include a 2022 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and selection as a Finalist in 2021, 2nd place in the 2021 UMKC Chamber Music Composition Competition, and a 2020 Mu Phi Epsilon National Undergraduate Research Award for her research on the music and pedagogy of Gabriel Fauré. She has attended festivals such as the Norfolk New Music Workshop, June in Buffalo, Fresh Inc, Nief-Norf Summer Festival, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and has worked with artists such as the JACK Quartet, Imani Winds, Don-Paul Kahl, the Slee Synfonietta, and the Mammoth Trio.
Stretch Marks
Composed June 2021 – Voice, Clarinet, Piano
From the composer: “Stretch marks are part of life. They happen when a person’s body expands rapidly, whether from puberty, weight gain, or pregnancy. There has recently been an increase in the body positivity movement on social media, and while this is a good thing, I sometimes find myself falling into a dishonest trap of toxic, inauthentic self-love.
This piece uses intimate timbres to draw the audience into the singer’s journey over their body. The stretch marks are a part of the music, weaving melodic lines that expand and contract, rippling across the temporal “body” of the piece. Working to love flaws is good, but gaslighting oneself into believing feelings of inadequacy don’t exist is dangerous. Sometimes I cry, and that isn’t a moral failing.“