Lauren Coons
Composer and Healing Arts Practitioner
Lauren Coons is a composer, dancer, writer, teaching artist and healing arts practitioner based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a lifelong artist in a variety of disciplines, Lauren has been most inspired by the power of art and creativity to heal and connect people and to bring depth and meaning to our lives. Through teaching and facilitating classes, workshops, and other types of arts-based experiences, she is aims to make the healing experience of making, moving, and participating in the arts accessible to more individuals and communities.
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Lauren has composed numerous pieces for local, national, and international artists and institutions including the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Abrepaso Flamenco, Wave Dash Duo, New Music New Mexico, New Mexico Contemporary Ensemble, and the UNM Health Sciences Center Orchestra. She is most interested in the composition of intermedia works and collaborative and community-based projects. Through experiential compositional processes like exploring a small urban dam, spending an hour with a tree, walking as slowly as possible over a rickety footbridge, or documenting every neighborhood in her hometown, her work is an invitation to herself and others to be curious about and amazed by our personal narratives, everyday lives and immediate environments. Whatever sonic, visual, or literary mediums are employed, her works are characterized by a sense of playfulness and reverence, and favor simplicity over complexity as a means of uncovering depth and virtuosity. Lauren frequently invites performers and audiences to participate in the compositional process by inviting the public to contribute material, utilizing social media and community outreach, and collaborating closely with performers. She aims to remove the walls between herself, the performer, and the audience and to encourage people to participate in art and composition, regardless of their background, knowledge, or expertise.
To learn more about Lauren’s creative work, visit www.laurenvcoons.com.
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In addition to offering her own unique programs in music, movement, expressive art-making, mindfulness and meditation, and Pilates and functional exercise, she has served as an artist and educator for and with a number of local organizations. She currently works as an artist-in-medicine for the University of New Mexico’s Arts-in-Medicine program providing music and mindfulness services to patients and staff in the University of New Mexico Hospital and co-teaches the Healing Arts courses at the University of New Mexico alongside program founder and director Dr. Patricia Ann Repar. She is also a composer teaching artist for the Santa Fe Opera’s Active Learning Through Opera Program and a faculty member at Albuquerque Academy’s Think Summer program where she teaches music/composition, Healing Arts, and Arts in the Community. Lauren is also proud to have helped deliver arts and educational programming to students and families at the Anderson Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum, youth dance classes at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque, and composition for kids at the UNM Music Prep School.
Lauren received her Master of Music degree in Music Theory & Composition and Musicology from the University of New Mexico in 2017. She is an ACE certified group exercise instructor and functional training specialist and a Polestar Pilates trained and AFPA certified Pilates Mat instructor. She is also a School of Positive Transformation certified mindfulness and meditation teacher.
Photo: Niccoli Scalice
