Composer Abbie Betinis creates “inventive” (The New York Times), “beguiling” (BBC Music Magazine) music that “pushes forward a brooding, dissonant unease” (Boston Globe), or “expands into ethereal realms” (Cambridge University Press). With performances from Carnegie Hall to Disney Hall, state prisons to capitol buildings, international cathedrals to intimate summer campfires, her music transports performers and audiences alike through storytelling, relevance, and craft.

Working largely by commission, Abbie has composed new music for world-class musicians and organizations, including the American Choral Directors Association, American Suzuki Foundation, Cantus, Chione wind quintet, clarinetist Michael Collins, Conspirare and the Miró String Quartet, Dale Warland Singers, Flying Forms Baroque, James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Music Educators Association, New England Philharmonic, soprano Carrie Henneman Shaw, St Olaf Choir, and Zeitgeist.

A two-time McKnight Artist Fellow, and lauded in Musical America for her “contrapuntal vitality” and “ability to use her talents to effect social change,” Abbie has won awards from the American Composers Forum, ASCAP, and the Minnesota Music Educators Association, among others. At age 31, she was voted one of the top 100 Composers Under 40 by listeners of National Public Radio and New York’s WQXR-FM. On public television, her early career as a cancer survivor finding her compositional voice was profiled in the regional Emmy award-winning documentary “Never Stop Singing.”

An advocate for small business and artist rights, she has presented on copyright and publishing at national conferences, organized national exhibits for independent publishers, and has been a community liaison to the board of the American Composers Forum. She publishes primarily through her own Abbie Betinis Music Co, with early titles published by Augsburg Fortress, Graphite Publishing, Kjos, and Santa Barbara Music, as well as in the esteemed “Dale Warland Series” at G. Schirmer, distributed by Hal Leonard.

As a frequent guest clinician, Abbie enjoys bringing the “why” off the page and into the energy of a rehearsal. She has held residencies with the New York State School Music Association, The Rose Ensemble, and The Singers-Minnesota Choral Artists. Since 2010, she has hosted The Schubert Club’s eclectic weekly concert series in St Paul, Minnesota.

Abbie is co-founder of Justice Choir, a template for community singing and mobile advocacy. In 2017, she co-edited the Justice Choir Songbook – a resource for community transformation through singing – now used in schools, streets, prisons, faith communities, and protest movements nationwide. She is interviewed about the process and necessity for group singing in troubled times in the 2023 documentary film “Choral Singing in America.”

Abbie studied composition at St. Olaf College (B.A.), the University of Minnesota (M.A.), and the EAMA Nadia Boulanger Institute in Paris, France. For over a decade, she was adjunct professor of music composition at Concordia University-St Paul, and now enjoys teaching from her small home studio in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.