ABOUT:
Wendy Durrwachter is a composer, arranger, and pianist. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she grew up in Green Bay on Lake Michigan. She spent many summers on extended camping trips in the lands of the Laurentian Divide bordering the US Midwest and Canada - including an unforgettable trip backpacking Isle Royale and a fourteen-day trip paddling the Quetico/Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The time spent in the north woods left some flood basalt deposits on her interpretative lens during adolescence. She went on to spend years following highways of gnarled tree-roots; recipes; iron magnets; gnomes; squires; and wickered wind-patterns; leading ultimately to a residence at the head of the Great Lakes - Duluth, Minnesota.
Wendy Durrwachter's artistic vision is precise without precision, pretense, restraint, fetters, feasibility, relent, defeat, apology, frivolity, and pedantry. It follows its nose on most occasions which often leads to gardens of timeless fruit and first dreams. It then enters the devotional stage to materialize the vision. This equals a labor of love. The process is best represented by the opening and closing line of Octavio Paz' Sunstone (Piedra del Sol): "A crystal willow, a poplar of water, a tall fountain the wind arches over, a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still, a course of a river that turns, moves on, doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving......."
EDUCATION:
Wendy Durrwachter began study with piano at age three with Bishop Michael Bent in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She attended summer piano academies at University of Wisconsin, Whitewater; and Indiana University, Bloomington. Durrwachter had the privilege to study orchestration and composition with Judith Lang Zaimont at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and received a B.A. in piano and composition in 2000.
