Sarah Kirkland Snider

The album received widespread critical acclaim and commercial success—as of 2020, the song cycle has been performed over fifty times in North America and Europe. Pitchfork's Jayson Greene described Penelope as “a gorgeous piece of music and hauntingly vivid psychological portrait.” Time Out New York named Penelope its “No. 1 Classical Album of 2010”, while NPR deemed the song cycle among its “Top Five Genre-Defying Albums of 2010.”

Snider’s first Mass and third album was commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street, the renowned New York City sacred choral institution, and released on Nonesuch Records/New Amsterdam Records on September 25, 2020. Part of Trinity’s Mass Re-Imaginings project, the work is described as "a rumination on the concept of the traditional Catholic Mass, its fidelity enhanced by Snider’s interpolation of traditional Latin text for the Gloria, Sanctus/Benedictus, and parts of the Kyrie, Credo, and Agnus Dei." The six-movement work is written for SATB choir and twelve instruments.

In part for the success of her three albums of large-scale works for voices and instruments, as well as her co-leadership of the label New Amsterdam Records, The Washington Post named Snider one of the Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music in 2019. Elsewhere, she has been cited by critics as "a significant figure on the American music landscape", "an important representative of 21st century trends in composition," and "one of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers."

Snider was Composer-in-Residence at UC-Boulder in 2018–19; she has also been Composer-in-Residence at Winnipeg New Music Festival, Soundstreams, the Bowling Green State University New Music Festival, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Nief-Norf Festival, Decoda Ensemble's Skidmore Chamber Music Institute, and the So Percussion Summer Institute. In 2014, Snider received the Elaine Lebenbom Award from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the only orchestra-sponsored award granted annually to a living female composer of any age or nationality.

In 2017, vocalists Padma Newsome, Shara Nova, and DM Stith toured Unremembered in the U.S. and Europe with various orchestras and ensembles at venues including Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival (with The Knights), Liquid Music (with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra), the SHIFT Festival (with North Carolina Symphony), and Holland’s Cross-linx Festival (with the Doelen Ensemble and Codarts Rotterdam).

Snider’s sophomore album, Unremembered, is scored for seven voices, chamber orchestra, and electronics, an expanded scope from Penelope. Released September 4, 2015 on New Amsterdam Records, critics deemed the song cycle an overwhelming success—it appeared in over 20 year-end lists for Best Album, including “Top 5 Classical Albums of 2015” in The Washington Post.

Snider has received particular recognition for her album releases of her classical song cycles and her Mass: Penelope (2010), Unremembered (2015), and Mass for the Endangered (2020).

New Amsterdam Records, who published the album on October 26, 2010, describes the work as follows:

Written for female voice and chamber orchestra, Penelope is an orchestral song cycle based on Homer's Odyssey, imagining the ancient Greek epic as told from the perspective of Odysseus's wife, Penelope. Penelope was originally conceived as a music-theater monodrama in 2007–2008, commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Center and scored for alto/actor and string quartet. Snider later expanded it to a song cycle, expanding and tailoring it to the unique talents of vocalist Shara Worden and the chamber orchestra Ensemble Signal, both of whom feature prominently in the reimagined work. Its lyrics were written by Ellen McLaughlin.

"The Lotus Eaters", the fourth song on the album, received particular attention. HuffPost named it one of the Top Ten Alternative Art Songs of 2001–2010, while NPR listed the track as among the "200 Greatest Songs Written by 21st Century Women" in 2018, eight years after its release.

Snider received a BA in Psychology-Sociology from Wesleyan University, where she decided not to pursue composition because she felt her music too conservative for its experimentally-oriented program. After graduating in 1995, she moved to New York and worked at a pro-choice law firm. While considering pursuing public interest law, she began writing music for experimental theater and decided to pursue composition full-time. Snider enrolled in the composition master's program at New York University to study with composer Justin Dello Joio, whom she called “a brilliant, Nadia Boulanger-style teacher,” but left after three semesters. In 2005 and 2006, she received a Master of Music and an Artist Diploma in Composition from the Yale School of Music, where she studied with Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and David Lang.

Sarah Kirkland Snider (born October 8, 1973) is an American composer. She has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral, song cycle, choral, and ballet works.