Kolten Heeren is an American composer whose work centers around diverse soundscapes and organic storytelling. His music blends modal polyphony with aleatoric soundmass, always with an emerging undercurrent of vocal lyricism evoking echoes of memory, nostalgia, and wistful dreaming.
His music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe, and he has served as a composition fellow for the June in Buffalo and Etchings Music Festivals. Additionally, he has been a finalist for both the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composers Award and BMI Student Composers Award.
Kolten received his Bachelor of Music in Music Composition/Theory from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, where he studied with Erin Gee, Heinrich Taube, Zack Browning, Stephen Taylor, and Reynold Tharp. He moved on to receive his Masters of Music in Music Composition from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. There he studied with P.Q. Phan, Aaron Travers, and Eugene O’Brien.
Kolten is also an accomplished Double Bassist, performing with orchestras and opera companies around the United States. He is a section member of the Sarasota Opera, and has performed with the Sarasota Orchestra, Indianapolis Opera, and Indianapolis Chamber Orchestras. Also a soloist, he most recently recorded his own composition Elegy for the Rasping Masses for unaccompanied double bass.
Kolten received his Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, where he studied with Michael Cameron. While there, he received the String Division Award of Achievement. Kolten continued his studies at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he earned a Performance Diploma in Orchestral Studies studying with Kurt Muroki.
