Composer Bio Heather began composing music at the age of twelve and clearly remembers the fateful day that started it all. A teacher invited her junior high music class to imagine a bee flying around - while they listened to Korsokov's 'Flight of the Bumblebee.' This imaginative invitation ignited her spirit and mind, and ever since, listening to instrumental music triggered imagined characters, moods, scenes, and later dances - much like a movie. Her love with music was officially launched and she began composing immediately. Upon meeting her birthfamily, she learned that her birthcousins, birthgrandparents, and even her birthgreat-grandparents were composers and that they had also similarly worked by ear. Ironically, her birth-grandmother's own signature violin piece was none other than the 'Flight of the Bumblebee.' Her adoption story inspired early attempts at writing a fairytale opera and musical, which she produced with friends in highschool and college. After informal but encouraging coaching in high school, Heather went on to study music composition at the college level. She studied composition and orchestration privately in Paris with composer Roger Tessier, at the Darius Milhaud Conservatoire, Paris XIV. Heather supplemented this with musical studies and private lessons at La Schola Cantorum and the University of Paris. Her Bacherlor's and Master's in Music Composition were earned at The Hartt School, University of Hartford, in Hartford Connecticut, where many of her pieces were requested and performed. In addition to creating works for various ensembles at Hartt, and orchestrating for the musical theatre department, she was commissioned to create incidental music for Shakespeare plays by "Developing Stages." Heather has written many short works for a variety of instruments and has also created many arrangements and orchestrations including orchestrations of piano works by Schoenberg, Schumann, Beethoven, and Debussy and a piano reduction (for two pianos) of Suppe's 'The Poet and Peasant Overture'. Her musical style is best known for its memorable melodies. Her writing style is lyrical, accessible, and clear with harmonies that are predominantly traditional or modal. Most of her pieces are a response to a character or story (real or imagined), an emotion, or a selected text. She has set poetry and sacred texts as well as many original lyrics. Her approach to composing involves an emphasis on the melodic appeal of every inner line and an attempt to present great beauty within the context of refined clarity; it has been likened by listeners to the music of Debussy and Brahms. Since 2005, Heather has devoted herself to developing choral works to serve the church, which she views as her main 'calling'. Her sacred and spiritual music has been performed in worship services and concerts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, California, Hawaii, and Virginia. Heather has used her love of dance, creative writing, and theatre and her concern for social issues in her multi-media performance art pieces; The Weather Wheel, The Mascara Massacre and Savage Inequalities, based on Kozol's book by the same name. A more recent work, calling for compassion for the poor, is an SSAA choral piece with chamber ensemble inspired by Mother Teresa's work in Calcutta and arranged upon a Bach sinfonia. Heather has written a Theme and Variations on a theme by Mozart for saxophone quartet and her Theme and Variations on the famous Elvis song "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You", for solo piano, was premiered in March, 2010 at the 10th Annual Women Composers Festival in Hartford, Connecticut, by pianist Alex Maynegre. In 2001, Heather founded the Women Composers Festival, participated as a volunteer artistic and executive director, performer, and conductor for many years, and helped to create the Friends of Women Composers Society, a corp of volunteers which produces the festival. The festival supports women composers, historical and contemporary, from many countries, levels, and styles, and serves to foster an appreciation for their lives and creative legacies. The Festival is held in Hartford, CT during National Women's History Month, March, and has lead to the performing and recording of works by over a hundred women composers. Seaton recently conducted the premier of her SATB spiritual, "Answer Me When I Call," in March 2011 at Pohick Church in Lorton. The work, whose text was derived from Psalm 4:1-4, was dedicated to The Choir of Pohick, and music director Linda Egan. This was followed by a chamber-choral piece dedicated to Mother Teresa. Her most recent projects include two hymn settings. To commission a work, please send a proposal via the Contact Page. |
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