Described as “music of ethereal delicacy” (Chicago Sun-Times) and “otherworldly rapture” (Chicago Reader), Kathleen Ginther’s colorful, vibrant and immediate music has been performed in Italy, England, Scotland, Holland, China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Brazil, as well as in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles. She has been a Visiting Composer at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bowling Green New Music Festival, the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State University, Festival of Women Composers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Donne in Musica (Italy) and the Utrecht Conservatory. In Chicago her music has been performed in concerts at the Ravinia Festival, The Art Institute of Chicago, Symphony Center, Northwestern University, DePaul University, the Chicago Cultural Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Constellation, MoMing Performing Arts Center and Artemisia Gallery, among many others. 

Ms. Ginther has received four Artist Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Arts Council. An award from Chicago Artists International resulted in a multi-year collaboration with Scottish visual artist Moira Scott Payne and several performances/exhibitions in Scotland. She was recently the subject of a Composer Portrait concert at The Music Institute of Chicago, and was featured in a WTTW documentary entitled “Illinois Artists at Work”. Dr. Ginther received her M.M. in Composition from DePaul University, where she studied with George Flynn, and her D.M.A. in Composition from Northwestern University, where her teachers were Alan Stout and M. William Karlins.
A lifelong advocate for new music, Kathleen Ginther has worked with multiple composer-based groups in an effort to expand the audience for new music. As President and Program Director of American Women Composers Midwest she presented concerts and worked with other performing and presenting groups to integrate music by women into their repertoires. She founded and directed Outside The Box, an annual Festival of New Music at Southern Illinois University, where she taught Composition and Music Theory for 18 years. Currently she working on a new CD of her works for Chicago’s Southport Composers Series.