Biography

“Cor meum est templum sacrum is one of our favorite songs to sing and to program. It has created a transcendent moment on many of our sacred programs.”
—Chanticleer

Composer, violinist, and poet Patricia Van Ness (1951) draws upon elements of medieval and Renaissance music to create a signature voice that has been hailed by musicians, audiences, and critics. She has been called a modern-day Hildegard von Bingen (1,2), with her ability to compose music “ecstatic and ethereal,” “both ancient and new.” (2,3) As in medieval aesthetics, her music and poetry explore the relationship between beauty and the Divine.

Patricia Van Ness’s work has had an impact that is both local and global. She has been commissioned, recorded and performed by many ensembles, including The King’s Singers; St. Martin’s Voices, St. Martin in the Fields; The Heidelberg New Music Festival  and Chanticleer, among numerous others, and performed internationally (Italy, Holland, England, Austria, Finland, China, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Latvia; Scotland; Sweden, Latin America, Canada, Latvia, Russia and the United States). She is Staff Composer (1996-) for First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Peter Sykes, Music Director); Composer-In-Residence at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Burlingame, CA (Susan Jane Matthews DMA, ARSCM, Music Director) and has been an invited lecturer at Harvard University and Boston University.

She is currently composing new music for each of the 150 psalms. The texts are in English, Hebrew and Latin using the Psalter, the Hebrew Text, and the Liber Usualis.

Ms. Van Ness’s awards include Europe’s prestigious Echo Klassik Prize awarded to the ensemble Tapestry for their recording of Sapphire Night, containing a nine-movement work by Van Ness;  Chamber Music America’s  “Album of the Year,” awarded to Tapestry for The Fourth River, containing two of Van Ness’s works;  Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming to Coro Allegro (David Hodgkins, Artistic Director) in the season that the twelve-movement Psalms of Luminous Rescue was commissioned and premiered; and the Daniel Pinkham Award from Coro Allegro (David Hodgkins, Artistic Director). 

Ms. Van Ness’s music may be found on The Best of the King’s Singers (My Heart is a Holy Place); on Telarc International; Warner Classics; MDG; and numerous other commercially-released recordings that are available on Amazon, Spotify, and all other on-line platforms.  Her scores are available at www.patriciavanness.com.  My Heart is a Holy Place is published by The King’s Singers Choral Series, distributed by the Hal Leonard Corporation and available here. Ms. Van Ness is a member of American Composers Forum, ASCAP, the International Alliance for Women in Music, and a former member of the Board of the Cambridge Society for Early Music.  For more information, please go to www.patriciavanness.com.

1 Gary Higginson, Music Web UK
2 Gaby Beinhorn, Suedwestrundfunk, Germany
3 Susan Larson, The Boston Globe

2015 Composition Grant awarded by the Special Projects Committee and Special Projects Fund of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.