Chelsea Komschlies’ music, called “otherworldly” and “uncanny” and praised for its “vivid storytelling” (Chicago Classical Review), blends the familiar and strange in mysterious ways. She prioritizes perception of her music by the human brain and shared experiences among listeners. Her compositions, each a distinct fantasy world, evoke vivid multisensory imagery and a range of psycho-emotional landscapes, from whimsical nostalgia and camp to eerie disquiet, and from altered states of consciousness to glittering spiritual awe. A 2023 Virginia B. Toulmin Commission recipient through the League of American Orchestras, she premiered Mycelialore for orchestra and electronics with the Tucson Symphony in 2025. She joins the Louisville Orchestra’s Creators Corps in the 2025-26 season, during which time she will compose several new works for the orchestra. She is expanding her work into immersive VR and has initiated a partnership with Louisville Makes Games, a local nonprofit game developer community, to create musical compositions that are both visually immersive and gamified.

Ms. Komschlies’ work has been commissioned and supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, the Hermitage, Fromm, and ASCAP Foundations, the Alfred Casella Award (Curtis Institute), and Copland House. Presenters include Alarm Will Sound, Bozzini Quartet, Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the Louisville Orchestra, Tucson, Omaha, Vermont, Pittsburgh, Steamboat, and Lima Symphonies, Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, TIME SPANS Festival, Grant Park Music Festival, Choral Arts Philadelphia, Fifth House Ensemble, Codes d’accès, Le Vivier, the Boulanger Initiative, Make Music Chicago, and Star Trek: The Cruise.

A Ph.D. candidate at McGill University under Jean Lesage, she has received McGill’s Andrew Svoboda Prize for Orchestral Composition and the Research Alive Student Prize. Her thesis on musically encoding shared multisensory information is supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, which recognized it as the top-ranked music research project in the province.

Composer dates:

Born March 19, 1991, Appleton, Wisconsin, USA

Contact: chelsea@komschlies.com