Kaley Lane Eaton
Kaley Lane Eaton
Avant-garde classical composer? Freak-folk singer-songwriter? Postmodern jazz interloper? Recently eschewing electronic instruments for a banjo, Eaton’s music is colored by her eclectic musical expertise, spanning the Renaissance lute, 20th century post-tonal harmony, American minimalism and frontier songs of the American west. Her “disconcertingly lovely” (Seattle Weekly) compositions are “unconfined by genres and musical classifications” (V13 Media), combining her “glass-like voice” (Earshot Jazz) with folk roots and experimental chamber music.
Most recently, her work has been presented by Town Hall Seattle, Rencontres Musicales Homay (Switzerland), the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Modern Orchestra, the Fresh Squeezed Opera Company (NYC), and Karin Stevens Dance, and has enjoyed support from such organizations as the Jack Straw Cultural Center, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, the Allied Arts Foundation, the International Alliance for Women in Music, and 4Culture. She is founder and artistic director of the neo-country chamber folk string band and new music ensemble Kaley Lane Eaton’s Plectrum Five, whose debut album will release in Spring 2026. A sought-after experimental vocalist, she has premiered over 40 new works by living composers in addition to her own compositions.
In addition to frequently performing her own work, she is an avid collaborator, interpreting the work of others and enjoying both traditional commissions and unconventional creation with composers, choreographers, solo artists and chamber ensembles across the country. Since 2017, she has been the arranger and vocalist for The Seattle Symphony’s Lullaby Project, where Seattle Symphony musicians gather with families at Seattle’s Mary’s Place to write lullabies for their children.
With flutist/composer Leanna Keith and violist/composer Heather Bentley, Eaton co-founded and co-directs Kin of the Moon, “an experimental chamber troupe with an ear for the eclectic. A power trio with classical roots and sprawling musical tastes, their intimate performances blend classical music with sonic ritual, dissolving genre and erasing boundaries between performer and audience.” (Maggie Molloy, Second Inversion). Kin of the Moon operates Strange Moon Records, a nonprofit label that gathers, preserves, and disseminates the music of artists affiliated with Kin of the Moon and Los Angeles-based ensemble Strange Interlude.
As a scholar with particular interest in the role of music's relationship to feminism, technology, education, and our larger culture, Eaton has been presented by the College Music Society (“Liberation and Abuse in Electronic Music,” Bogota, Colombia, June 2025; “AI is Not Inevitable,” Houston, Texas, January 2026) and published by KING FM's Second Inversion ("Women, Creativity, and the Classroom" (2016) and "Reflections on Wilderness" (2017)) and Common Tone Arts (“Hit the reset button: Rethinking how we teach music technology” (2020) and "Things I wish I had known when I thought I couldn't be a composer" (2017)).
Eaton holds a MM in Vocal Performance and a Master of Arts in Teaching from the Longy School of Music of Bard College and a DMA in composition from the University of Washington. For the past 8 years, she served on the faculty at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University, teaching composition, theory, voice, and music technology.