Julietta Anne Rabens teaches composition, harp, and piano at the New Mexico School of Music. She received a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition, with a minor in Piano Pedagogy from University of Nebraska in Lincoln. For her dissertation she composed a harp concerto, Bitterroot Soundscape. She received her Master of Music in Harp from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, where she studied harp performance with Liz Cifani, and received training in Healing Harps and special education from Dr. Ron Price. During her program she developed a series of four graded pedagogical books for beginning harpists, Classics at Your Fingertips. She has also composed a piano concerto, cantata, chamber works, and has arranged flute and harp repertoire for the Bell’ Alma Duo’s CD , La Belle Vie. Her most recent work includes a chamber opera based on the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. Most recently she has recorded a CD of songs she composed which are accompanied
by harp and piano.
As a performer, she is an enthusiastic advocate for new music, and has performed with a variety of ensembles ranging from orchestral to experimental jazz. She also has a passion for a variety of folk harp traditions including Celtic and Paraguayan. As a teacher she has experience working with students with special needs, such as visual and hearing impairment, Cerebral Palsy, autism, anxiety issues, specific learning problems, and cancer survivors. She currently works as a harpist in the Arts-in-Medicine program through the University of New Mexico.
Her music can be described as possessing clarity and accessibility embedded with eclectic influences. Nature is her primary instructor for understanding how the human ideas of aesthetics and meaning may be investigated and expressed in sound.