25 Facts About Clarice Assad

Clarice Assad was born on February 9,1978 and is a Brazilian-American composer, pianist, arranger, singer, and educator from Rio de Janeiro.

Clarice Assad is influenced by popular Brazilian culture, Romanticism, world music, and jazz.

Clarice Assad comes from a musical family, which includes her father, guitarist Sergio Assad, her uncle, guitarist Odair Assad, and her aunt, singer-songwriter Badi Assad.

Clarice Assad holds a bachelor of music degree from Roosevelt University in Chicago and a master's degree in composition from the University of Michigan, where she studied composition with Michael Daugherty.

Clarice Assad is a 2009 Latin Grammy and 2022 Grammy nominee.

Clarice Assad was born with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a group of disorders that affect connective tissues, which severely limited her ability to perform musical instruments at an early age, but the condition did not affect her voice.

Clarice Assad studied piano and improvisation privately with Natalie Fortin, a professor from Le Conservatoire national Superieur de Paris, and benefited from her father's mentorship, composing, and arranging numerous pieces.

In Rio de Janeiro, between 1995 and 1997, Clarice Assad acted as a pianist, arranger, and keyboardist on several musicals including Ta na Hora by playwright Lucia Coelho, A Estrela Menina by Joaquim de Paula, and Doidas Folias by playwright and composer Tim Rescala.

Clarice Assad's compositions include pieces for a variety of instrumentations, including smaller works for piano and guitar as well as for large and small chamber ensembles, and orchestral works.

Clarice Assad first came into the national spotlight in 2004, when conductor Marin Alsop programmed her violin concerto with the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music featuring Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg as the soloist.

The piece was recorded by Salerno-Sonnenberg and Marin Alsop leading the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and released on the NSS Music label when Clarice Assad was 26 years old.

Since then, Clarice Assad has been steadily commissioned, pursuing ways of incorporating her composing and performing.

Clarice Assad's music has been commissioned by many institutions, performers and orchestras including Carnegie Hall, The Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo, General Electric, the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Duo Noire, to name a few.

Clarice Assad's works have been recorded by some of the most prominent names in the classical contemporary music scene today, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott and oboist Liang Wang.

Clarice Assad has collaborated with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Turtle Island String Quartet, the Aquarelle Guitar Quartet, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Louisville Symphony Orchestra, Austin Symphony Orchestra, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Edmonton Symphony, as well as conductors Marin Alsop and Christoph Eschenbach, Kazuyoshi Akiyama and Carlos Miguel Prieto.

Clarice Assad has written extensively for active members of the new music scene including the Cavatina Duo, Takacs Quartet, SOLI ensemble and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.

Clarice Assad has served as composer-in-residence for KMFA, MIT, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra.

Clarice Assad is currently serving as the composer-in-residence for the Allentown Symphony Orchestra.

Clarice Assad's works have been published in France, Germany, in the United States, and Brazil.

Clarice Assad has contributed significantly to the growing repertoire of classical guitar, having written works ranging from solos to duos and quartets such as the piece Bluezilian, which has become a staple of the guitar quartet repertoire.

Many other works followed on this verge, and in 2019, Clarice Assad wrote Synthetico, a work for chamber ensemble and vocal electronics.

Clarice Assad's first work for the stage was a soundtrack written for a 2001 adaptation of Argentinian playwright Carlos Mathus's play La Leccion de Anatomia, originally published in the 1970s.

Clarice Assad has worked with numerous youth groups through residency programs, often culminating in performances involving large ensembles and orchestras.

In 2010, Clarice Assad began performing more frequently, and eventually founded the international ensemble Off the Cliff, an energetic and daring four-piece ensemble of internationally accomplished musicians.

Clarice Assad takes the immersive experience outside of the concert hall with the accessible VOXploration, which she created in 2015.