Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "a serious triple threat", Brazilian-American Clarice Assad is a Grammy nominated composer, performer and educator of musical depth and versatility. Her music has been commissioned by Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, General Electric, Sybarite5, Cedille Records, the Vail Music Festival and the La Jolla Music Festival, to name a few. Her works have been recorded by some of the most prominent names in the classical contemporary music scene today, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Yo-Yo Ma, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Liang Wang.
Assad has served as a composer-in-residence for the Albany Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the New Century Chamber Orchestra and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. She is the recipient of such awards as the Aaron Copland Award, several ASCAP awards in composition, New Music USA, the Van Lier Fellowship, League of American Orchestras, NPR’s All Songs Considered, the Mcknight Visiting Composer Fellowship and The American Composers Forum’s National Composition Competition. Assad’s music is represented on Cedille Records, SONY Masterworks, Nonsuch, Adventure Music, Edge, Telarc, NSS Music, GHA, and CHANDOS labels.
As a performer, Clarice has shared the stage with Bobby McFerrin, Anat Cohen, Nadia Sirota, Paquito D’Rivera, Tom Harrell, Marilyn Mazur and Mike Marshall, among other outstanding musicians. She has performed at venues and festivals including Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Caramoor International Jazz Festival, Carnegie hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Concertgebow, Le Casino de Paris and Le Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels.
Hailed by the LA Times as “a dazzling soloist,” Clarice sings in Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and English, but thrives in exploring the voice as an instrument, creating a vast range of innovative textures and vocabulary of extended techniques into her music. Such interest in the human voice, combined with her passion for orchestral music led to the creation of the world’s first scat singing concerto, which she performs frequently with orchestras around the world.
A passionate educator, Clarice is the founder of VOXploration - a creative workshop exploring the body and the voice as musical instruments that combine improvisation, songwriting and compositional elements. VOX has received grants and awards from Brazilian foundations such as CAIXA CULTURAL and SESC. She has also taught the workshop extensively in the United States, Qatar, Poland, Denmark and Italy. Assad is currently developing an educational program featuring the workshop in the south side of Chicago, in collaboration with the Old Town School of Folk Music.
She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Roosevelt University and a Master of Music degree from The University of Michigan School of Music, where she studied with Michael Daugherty, Susan Botti and Evan Chambers. Her works are published in France (Editions Lemoine), Germany (Trekel), Criadores do Brasil (Brazil) and by Virtual Artists Collective Publishing, (VACP) a publishing company co-founded with poet and philosopher Steve Schroeder.