Patricia Wallinga

San Francisco-based composer Patricia Wallinga connects audiences with unheard stories, voices, and ideas of the modern world. Her intricate, charismatic music engages with traditions from literature, dance, theater, and folk music alongside classical influences. Her work has been called “quite powerful” (Bloomington Herald-Times) and “damn brilliant” (conductor and composer Eric Whitacre).

Wallinga is known best for her focus on vocal music. In June 2025, her opera The Sisters was premiered by Liberty City Arts in Philadelphia. She won a 2015 BMI Student Composer Award for her first song cycle, Dreams in War Time, and was named a finalist for the National Association of Teachers of Singing 2019 Art Song Composition Award for her 2018 cycle The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Other highlights of Wallinga’s career include residency at the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music (with the Del Sol String Quartet), and a 2023 piano concerto reimagining of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Sonata in G Minor with pianist Sharon Su.

Wallinga holds degrees in composition from Indiana University and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She sings with the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco. She also advocates extensively online for equality and modernity in the classical music community.