Described as "striking" and "inventive" (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), composer and flutist KiMani (Key-Mahn-ee) Bridges is a dynamic artist whose expressive style and distinctive technique differentiates her in contemporary circles. KiMani’s music, colorful and personalized, explores a space where suspense, mystery, majesticness, and curiosity coexist. 

 

Most recently, the Louisville native has been commissioned, performed, and premiered by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, and at Musaics of the Bay, the Festival of Faiths, and the duPont Manual's New Works Festival.

 

Bridges has performed at venues including Auer Hall at Indiana University, Bird Hall at the University of Louisville, and the Kentucky Center for the Arts. She has attended festivals including VIA Academy, Umoja Flute Institute, the Aria Music Festival, and Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Summer Institute.

 

In 2019-20, she was awarded fellowships with Luna Composition Lab, a program of the Kaufman Music Center, and bespoken (2021), high selective leadership programs that bring together the industry's most promising leaders in the country as well as the Loretto Project's Pathways Initiative Program. In addition, she was named a NextNotes High School Creator Award Winner of 2020 by the American Composers Forum and awarded the G. Schirmer Prize for her work "The Flower '' in 2020. 

 

KiMani currently attends the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and is pursuing a B.M. in composition and in flute performance under P.Q. Phan, Don Freund, and Thomas Robertello.