Santa Fe Art Institute

Elizabeth Garland

Elizabeth Garland is an award-winning composer/ producer/performer and writer residing in New Mexico. Winning the MTNA Honors Piano Competition in New Mexico at age sixteen, Elizabeth began composing in earnest while pursuing her undergraduate degree. Her passion for film music later led her to the Composition and Orchestration for TV and Film Program at Berklee College of Music.

Elizabeth has received top honors in Unsigned Only- First Prize (Instrumental), International Golden Key Composition Competition- First Prize (Professional division), International Music Guild Composition Competition- First prize and International Songwriting Competition- Finalist. She was named Commissioned Composer of New Mexico in 2020-2021. An international best-selling author in the Power of Why Series, she was awarded a 2024 Urban Enhancement Trust Fund Residency, a Resiliency Residency with FUSION Theatre, an Arts Hub Fellowship and a fellowship at the Keshet Center of the Arts.

Scoring two feature films, many short films, documentaries, and producing avant-garde stage productions in collaboration with her ensemble, Delphi Project. She has performed in the US, at the World Composers Concert in Vienna and across Europe. Her works have been called “haunting, evocative, soulful.”

Collaboration provides inspiration and a platform for spotlighting contemporary issues, such as poverty, immigration and motherhood, Native American healing and the Ukrainian War.

Growing up with 4 brothers in a New Mexican border town, Elizabeth’s music reflects her past, “a mélange of land and sky- wild and dreamlike and always thirsty for the sea.”