Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke (1954—       )

Evelyn Pursley-Kopitzke is a composer, teacher, and church musician who thrives on facilitating collaborative ventures and creating opportunities.   She is a reformed nomad (having lived in over a dozen places, four countries and eight states in just 30 years.) who with her husband, Steve, decided that Eastern Tennessee was a good place to live.  They have lived in East Tennessee since 1984 and their daughter and son are born Tennesseeans.

Pursley-Kopitzke did her undergraduate work in music theory and composition with Margarita Merriman at Thayer Conservatory (Atlantic Union College) in Massachusetts and graduate studies in composition with Barney Childs at the University of Redlands in California.  She is the composer of numerous works including musicals, an oratorio/orchestral tone poem, art songs, choral works, chamber music, and solo instrumental pieces. She was twice commissioned to write for the East Tennessee Children's Choir (a professional children's choir that was part of the 2000 Continental Harmony project and is now part of Mountain Empire Children's Choral Acacemy, (MECCA)). She has produced radio commercials and a feature length recording of her own sacred art songs. In 2002 she received "Top Honors" in the Carlton Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace international choral project for her cannon, "Salaam, Frieden." In 1995 she helped found the Greater Tri-Cities Area Composers' Consortium. The Consortium has been a major source of inspiration and has contributed heavily to performances of Pursley-Kopitzke's new music. Among the Consortium's projects are multiple concerts: Compose Yourself, 2001 ("Nancy's Horn Quartet", Moonstruck Sonata); a Christmas concert, 2001 ("Only a Little Baby"); Artistic Reflections, 2004 (a music and visual art collaboration that included her song cycle Woodland Waterways); a wedding/concert, 2006 ("Fanfare for Strings", "The Lord's Prayer", "After All This Time"); Artistic Reflections II, 2008, (Reflections). She also considers herself the consortium’s "designated nag" since she functions as the group’s communication liaison and does much of the group's public relations writing. (See American Composers' Forum's  The Sounding Board  front page feature articles in May-June issues of 2004, 2006, and 2008, and in the Bristol Herald Courier's A! Magazine.

For the Artistic Reflections productions, she worked with the grant writer (Tennessee Arts Commission Arts Build Communities), helped collaborate with the visual artists who wrote "to" the music of the Consortium (2004), and was liaison with the King College Art Curator and other sponsors and participants. Three of Pursley-Kopitzke's piano pieces were included in the Consortium's 2005 Anthology of Piano Teaching Music, which was commissioned by the Appalachian Music Teachers' Association (AMTA). She was also the AMTA 2005 Composer of the Year. Her 2006 "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" had its Eurpean premiere by the Highlands Youth Ensemble in St. Stephen's Basilica, Budapest, Hungary, 2007. Pursley-Kopitzke's most recent non-consortium premieres include: "He Was a Man of Sorrow", King College Living Composers concert, 2007; Vignettes from an African Childhood, Paramount Players, 2007.

Although a lifelong citizen of the United States, it is, perhaps, significant that Pursley-Kopitzke was born in Tanzania, Africa, and lived most of her first decade in African countries.  She was totally fluent (no accent) in two African languages that she has now forgotten; however, the rhythms and harmonies of African speech and playground songs may have carried over into her music. As well as conventional idioms, you can often find unusual harmonies, migrating tonal centers, odd accent patterns (5/4, 7/8 and changing meters) and unusual uses of traditional instruments in her music. (African Vignettes, percussive use of cello, violin, and piano; Reflections, playing on the marimba resonators; Festival, clicking keys, clapping hands, stomping feet.)

Pursley-Kopitzke states that each new work she writes teaches her something new about music and life.  She hopes to communicate peace and beauty through her music, to paint evocative musical images, to create moments of musical magic.