The name is absent

63

Cities are geographically isolated from the costal avant-garde music scenes, but Larsen
enjoys the proximity to nature that her location affords her, as well as the fact that she can
choose when she travels, teaches, and composes. Although she has completed residencies
at various universities over the years, and is an active advocate for music education, she
relates: “I have been lucky enough to have the kind of musical life I wanted, and so I
never felt the need to be attached to an academic institution.”²⁶

All of Larsen’s works are composed on commission so she always knows exactly
for whom she is writing the music, and the circumstances of the first performance: “Plain
and simple: I compose on commission because I require the entire process of
commission, creating, performing and communicating, which is the very heart and soul
of the classical concert tradition. I have always felt that music can't live unless it is
performed.”²⁷ Larsen likes the musical and personal flexibility that her location and
career affords her, but much like O’Keeffe, she works “apart” from the mainstream, able
to maintain a successful career on her own terms.

Perhaps the most important similarity between the two artists is their quest to create
art that is unique, meaningful, and American. Both women work in mediums that were
developed in Europe, yet O’Keeffe and Larsen have found inspiration in American
culture, which makes their work unique and distinctly non-European.

O’Keeffe achieves this with the subject matter she chooses and the ways in which
she presents her subjects. Her paintings, aside from a number of cityscapes she completed
during her life in New York prior to 1929, are almost exclusively scenes taken from

²⁶ Libby Larsen, “FAQ” http://libbylarsen.com/index.php?contentID=233 (accessed 5
February 2010).

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