APRIL DAWN GUTHRIE is a composer/cellist/vocalist and Cherokee Nation citizen who finds hope in dissenters lost in our histories, stories of the forgotten, and inequalities which are grey and not easily definable. In 2024, her song and score for the play “a home what howls (or the house what was ravine),” inspired by the displacements of Chavez Ravine, world-premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Also in 2024, her chamber composition “ToyToyToypurina,” part of her suite "Our Founding Foremothers,” celebrating women who shaped American history, was selected for its New York premiere at the 2024 MATA Festival at Fotografiska. In 2019 her music for the world-premiere of “so go the ghosts of méxico,” reflecting the U.S./Mexico drug war, won Best Original Music/Songs of 2019 by Theatre Jones in Dallas, Texas.

Residencies/Commissions: Composer in Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Nautilus/New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, Wyoming Festival Fellowship, Hammer Museum LA Artists Residency, Center Theater Group Playwright Workshop, The Assembly’s Deceleration Lab, Westben's Performer/Composer Residency, International Contemporary Ensemble's Ensemble Evolution, Geffen Playhouse Writer’s Room (music for theatre), All For One Solo Collective, The TANK NYC, Premiere Stages, Boston Court Theatre, La Baldi Residency Cultivate.

As a cellist she has toured the world and worked with artists such as Björk, The Industry, WildUp, Wadada Leo Smith, Angel Olsen, Amanda Palmer, Blue Planet II, BBC's Big Cats, Perfume Genius, and the Alan Parsons Project,. April is currently composing an opera for "a home what howls..." and is continuing work on her upcoming Arts Capacity commission, which reflects on relationships with incarcerated siblings, set to premiere in several prisons across the country.