Wendy Durrwachter
is a composer residing in Duluth, Minnesota. In 2000, Durrwachter received a Bachelor of Arts from the U of MN Twin Cities with concentrations in piano performance and composition. In 2021, she received a Master of Music in Film Composition from the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program of the Seattle Film Institute. Durrwachter’s body of work includes song cycles, works for solo piano, art songs, chamber music, an opera, choral music, and large-scale orchestra.
Durrwachter was commissioned in 2025 by the Schubert Club to compose Seasons of Duluth, a short song cycle of poems by Louis Jenkins. The same year, she was commissioned by Matinee Musicale to compose a song celebrating their 125th Anniversary of a poem by MN Poet Laureate, Gwen Westerman. In 2024, Durrwachter produced a reading of her one-act opera 86 Dessert funded by a Minnesota State Arts Board Individual Artist grant. In the same year she completed a commission for Matinee Musicale and the St. Scholastica Library for cellist Ifetayo Ali-Landing. Additionally, she was commissioned by Vicki Fingalson for a song cycle on six poems by the Bronte Sisters entitled Retrospection.
The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra commissioned and performed Laurentia in 2023, a large-scale symphony inspired by the MN Arrowhead region. In 2019, her first symphony was commissioned by the Chequamegon Symphony Orchestra. Inspired by the Chequamegon Bay region of Lake Superior, its premiere was delayed by Covid but was eventually performed in 2024. In 2019, she received a second Career Development grant from the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council to compose a wind quintet by the U of MN Duluth Faculty Wind Quintet. Also in 2019, she recorded her first song cycle of ten poems by William Butler Yeats.
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Commissioned by the College of St. Scholastica Library to be performed by Ifetayo Ali-Landing at her Matinee Musicale concert at Mitchell Auditorium, CSS, Duluth, MN, in November 2024 In November 2020, Opera-Oriented Project Sponsorships in Minnesota (OOPS MN) commissioned Durrwachter to compose an aria to a chocolate chip cookie recipe with libretto developed by Pulitzer-Prize winning librettist Mark Campbell. It was performed by MN Opera soprano Tracey Engleman and pianist Jared Miller and recorded to video by HotDishAV. |
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Composed to the words of the beloved Duluth poet Sheila Packa performed by Siena Forest and Carson Rose Schneider at the Minneapolis Song Slam 2022. |
