Carrie RavenStem works as both a freelance musician and teacher in the Louisville/southern Indiana area. She has performed with several orchestras and ensembles including Louisville Chamber Winds, the Louisville Ballet, NouLou Chamber Players, Sacred Winds, the Kentucky Opera, Louisville Orchestra, Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Classical Symphony Orchestra, and Keep Louisville Symphonic. Her focus is on introducing audiences to living composers and contributing to the future of music by fostering the appreciation of new music.
Ms. RavenStem is co-founder and clarinetist of the contemporary music ensemble A/Tonal. With a mission to bridge the gap between traditional and new music, A/tonal explores with their audiences the correlations between traditional classical works and works of living composers. A/Tonal has been performing throughout the Kentuckiana area and has been featured on WUOLs The Unheard series, promoting the works of female composers. They have recorded an arrangement of NPR’s Morning Edition theme which may be heard on Soundcloud. In the summer of 2016, A/Tonal partnered with the Longleash trio as guests of their summer residency, The Loretto Project. The group’s premiere EP, Starting Point, was released on April 2, 2017, at their Kentucky Center debut. A/Tonal has also had a partnership with the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts in June 2017. They were in residency at the University of Louisville’s School of Music for the 2018-19 school year, with six new works commissioned for them by the student body.
With clarinetist and friend Adria Sutherland as her partner, clarinet duo La HERmandad was formed in 2020. The duo made their world debut in 2021 with the International Clarinet Association virtual conference Clareidoscope. In June 2022, the duo was invited to International Clarinet Association ClarinetFest in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, to perform the world premiere of a newly-commissionedwork The Mountain, composed by Jenni Brandon. Their next commission, with composer Erich Stem, received its world premiere at the International Clarinet Association 50th Anniversary ClarinetFest. The piece, re:CONNECT, moves through the four stages of separation and togetherness experienced by many during the 2020 COVID pandemic.
Carrie’s inaugural performance at ClarinetFest was in Knoxville Tennessee in July 2018. She performed the solo work Perceptions of Strife, which was written for her in 2011 by Peter Felice. She was also a guest artist for WoodwindFest 2020, the world’s first international virtual woodwind festival which was sponsored by Silverstein Works, performing the music of Jenni Brandon with pianist Kara Huber.
Her most recent commissioning projects include the International Clarinet Association New Music Committee’s solo & piano consortium by Margaret Brouwer, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano , a clarinet duet and piano work consortium project with Paul Schoenfeld Eretz Hefetz, and currently a new clarinet or bass clarinet/electronics work by Phong Tran.
As a highly-requested clinician and teacher in the Louisville/Southern Indiana region, she directs her attention to the short and long-term musical goals of each student. She runs an active teaching studio in her home in Louisville and works with several local schools and their clarinet sections. Ms. RavenStem has also been a clinician and guest artist at the University of Evansville’s Clarinet Day as well as clarinet and theory faculty for the University of Louisville’s Wind Band Institute. As a guest artist at Navarro College in Corsicana Texas May of 2022, she had the pleasure of working masterclasses with the clarinetists, private coaching sessions on
recital works, and a question/answer hour on the portfolio career life of the musician. In fall of 2022 she traveled to University of Tennessee Martin and shared with the clarinet studio in a masterclass, a discussion with the music education students on how private teachers can support their growing band programs, and was the inaugural speaker of the campus group Include’s Music Speaker Series, completing the residency with a recital of music by all female composers. Working in weekly coaching sessions and sectionals in local middle and high schools throughout the Kentuckiana area, Ms. RavenStem enjoys training young clarinetists and building future performers and audiences.
Carrie can be heard on the albums A/Tonal Starting Point, Where June Meets July: I. Overture from The Idyll Opus (I-VI) from Adjy, Sky Unconscious with Drift City, and the upcoming album of Andrew Montana. She is also the clarinet solist on the short documentary of metal by Clovehitch Productions.
Ms. RavenStem is a Backun Performing Artist and performs on Backun MoBa clarinets. She is also a Silverstein Works Aspiring Educator and performs on Hexa Gen 5 ligatures. Her reed of choice is Légère European Cut clarinet reeds.
Carrie enjoys sharing her music-filled life with husband, composer Erich Stem, their four kids, and 3 cats. Her secret hobbies are crocheting and making killer omelets.