Biography

Anjelica Lindsey is a music composer and multi-instrumentalist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her work is concerned with connecting personal history to larger cultural contexts, inviting others to uncover their own heritage and turn insights into meaningful action. She specializes in neo-classical music with a penchant for exploring production styles, using the recording studio and collection of electronics and synthesizers as a sonic palette. Noted composer and mentor Dr. Daniel Felsenfeld has described her compositions as "Romantic Minimalism."

Lindsey operates from her production studio, Wild Mountain Studios, located in Tulsa's Osage County, where she crafts her musical pieces. Her work often delves into thematic romanticism from a distinctly feminine perspective, drawing from her personal experiences and cultural background. While studying music composition through the Juilliard School, Lindsey is honing her craft under the guidance of esteemed mentors.

Additionally, she holds a Certificate of Business Leadership in Creative Industries from the Sotheby's Institute of Art in London, England, showcasing her commitment to both artistic and research based curatorial pursuits.

Through her compositions, Lindsey invites listeners to explore the interplay between her Oklahoma and Cherokee heritage and contemporary expression, offering a journey of introspection and emotion.

In March 2025, Lindsey premiered OKLAHOMA WOMAN QUARTET, an 11-movement work for string quartet and voice, marking the launch of the Oklahoma Woman Ensemble. That same month, she served as a visiting composer for the University of Tulsa’s music composition program. In 2024, Lindsey was awarded the Artists Creative Fund grant, an initiative of the George Kaiser Family Foundation and CACHE Create in recognition of her contributions to contemporary music composition and cultural preservation.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am an architect of sound. The experience of music is as concrete as the physical world, yet it exists in another realm. After all, we are vibrations materialized.

I write musical scores to help create a blueprint of myself for future generations. When musicians play the music on the page, they are bringing the composer back to life and expressing their inner world. As a composer, this breath of life gives my work hope and meaning.

The music I write has become an exploration into both my Native and European roots. Societally, my heritage has been cloaked from me, revealing more mysteries than definitive answers. I intend for my work to portray this as a female Cherokee composer.

Creating music for an ensemble involves meticulously hand crafting each note, orchestrating a cohesive and evocative musical narrative. The process becomes a call and response within the branches of my own family tree.

On Visibility, Representation, and the Work Ahead

As an Indigenous woman composer, I have witnessed firsthand the structural, systemic and cultural invisibility that defines much of our experience within the music world. Indigenous peoples and women remain vastly underrepresented not only in performance spaces, but in programming decisions, commissions, leadership roles, historical narratives and crediting. The classical canon has statistically long prioritized European male composers, while the voices of Native artists and women composers continue to exist on the periphery, if at all.

The Illuminative study on Native invisibility makes it plain: Native people are rarely seen in the media, in public life, or in the arts. This absence is not incidental. It is the result of long-standing systems of exclusion and cultural erasure. In classical music, the challenges compound. Even as conversations around diversity increase, the field remains resistant to truly transformative inclusion. Major institutions still hesitate to program works by living Indigenous or women composers, and the few who break through often do so in isolation, without systemic support.

My work exists to challenge that silence. It is my answer to erasure: a body of work intentionally composed, shared, and recorded from my voice and perspective. I am not here to be added as a token voice but to reshape what is possible. My work carves out space where our stories are not only heard but honored on their own terms. I believe that by centering Indigenous and feminine voices in composition and performance, we can expand the classical landscape into something more honest, more expansive, and more reflective of the world we live in.

Further Reading & Statistics

  • Keys for Change Campaign: Rewriting the legacy for women in classical music
    https://www.andantepiano.nl/story/keys-for-change-rewriting-the-legacy-of-women-in-classical-music

  • UK Parliament: Misogyny in music

    This is a House of Commons Committee report, with recommendations to government.

    Second Report of Session 2023–24.
    https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmwomeq/129/report.html

    The F-List for Music, a not-for-profit community interest company representing more than 5,000 female and gender nonconforming musicians in the UK, told us, “It is a noted phenomenon that women have to attain a higher standard and quality of creativity than their male counterparts.” In the music press, female artists often find their contribution to their own music questioned in a way that does not happen to male artists and the role of any male collaborators overstated.

  • The New York Times: ‘No Excuses Anymore’ for Gender Inequality in Classical Music
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/arts/music/wiener-festwochen-gender-inequality-classical-music.html

  • BBC Radio 3: The women erased from musical history

    On International Women’s Day 2018, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a concert of music by five “forgotten” women composers.

    All five women enjoyed some recognition for music-making during their lives, yet their achievements were often downplayed – and in some cases forgotten after their deaths.

    A group of trailblazing academics, in partnership with BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC, tracked down forgotten pieces of music in the archives, libraries and private collections where they had lain hidden for years – in some cases unheard since their very first performance.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1Tg6t6YxdxyYmKykSfWp9cs/the-women-erased-from-musical-history

  • Celebrating Women’s Achievements Boldly: Reframing the Narrative Around Recognition and Accolades
    https://www.workerscompensation.com/daily-headlines/celebrating-womens-achievements-boldly-reframing-the-narrative-around-recognition-and-accolades/

  • Donne UK
    Equality & Diversity in Global Repertoire

    A new report from Donne, Women in Music reveals a disturbing stagnation and regression in the diversity of global orchestral repertoire.

    Despite years of discussions about the importance of inclusivity, the representation of women and global majority composers in the 2023-2024 season has marginally declined, signalling an urgent need for change in the classical music industry.

    Overall data as well as individual charts for each of the 111 orchestras are available on the report:

    Orchestras

    • In the 2020-2021 season, only 5% of the compositions scheduled by the top 100 orchestras were written by women. Only 1.11% of the pieces were composed by Black and Asian women. Read more.

    • Film scores

      In 2021, women made up only 3% of composers for the top 100 films, down from 5% in 2020. In 2023, only 10% of the top 200 grossing movies credited women as composers or "Music by". Read more.

    • Oscars

      Only three women and non-binary composers have won an Oscar for Original Score in the 87-year history of the award. Read more.

    • Global representation

      The representation of women in music has declined slightly, from 7.7% to 7.5%. The representation of Black women composers has also declined, from 1.02% to 0.59%. Read more.