Composer and mezzo-soprano Patricia Wallinga specializes in writing and performing English-language art song, opera, and contemporary choral music. Her work has been referred to as "powerful" by Peter Jacobi of the Bloomington Herald-Times and "damn brilliant" by composer and conductor Eric Whitacre, and she has had performances across the continental United States as well as in Europe. Wallinga’s 2014 song cycle for tenor and piano, Dreams in War Time, received a 2015 BMI Student Composer Award, and its companion choral cantata Portraits of Wartime won the 2013 NOTUS Student Composition Contest and was performed and recorded by Indiana University’s elite contemporary vocal ensemble NOTUS, in which she was a member from 2013 to 2017. With NOTUS under the direction of Dominick DiOrio, she has premiered and recorded works by Claude Baker, John Gibson, Zachary Wadsworth, and Aaron Travers and toured with the ensemble to Carnegie Hall in New York City and the American Choral Directors Association National Conference in Salt Lake City. Wallinga has also been a member of the Jacobs School of Music’s student entrepreneurial program Project Jumpstart, and she has worked as a performer, composer, arranger, director, orchestra manager, and impresario for Bloomington student opera initiatives New Voices Opera, Reimagining Opera for Kids, and University Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Originally from Naperville, IL, she is currently a graduate student at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studies composition with Elinor Armer.
