Name: Melia Watras
Nationality: American
Occupation: Violist, educator, composer
Current release: Melia Watras's new album The almond tree duos is out via Planet M.
Recommendation for Seattle, US: Seattle is a city of breath-taking beauty, with its proximity to mountains, forests and water. There is a care for public parks and public spaces, even as Seattle grows. I love the parks here in Seattle! I walk almost daily in the arboretum. The Seattle Art Museum created the Olympic Sculpture Park on the Puget Sound that I recommend to everyone for its stunning combination of nature and art.

If you enjoyed this Melia Watras interview and would like to know more about her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



The borders between producers, sound artists, and even songwriters are becoming increasingly blurry. What does being a composer mean today, would you say?

I’m excited about the blurred lines! For me, at the root, being a composer is having the desire and purpose to create something that has a life of its own.

Performers are returning to the models of the past by adding composition and improvisation - spontaneous composition - to their tool belt.

Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal  impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?

I am inspired by nature (the greatest artist of all time), art, literature, movies, stories my friends share with me, people, dreams, fun rehearsals, and, of course, music itself.

Often my works have multiple sources of inspiration, such as my upcoming album, The almond tree duos. There are connections to Oscar Wilde, photographer Michelle Smith-Lewis and the musical form of a duo.

My dear friend, pianist Cristina Valdés shared special stories with me about her daughter Vina that I loved so much they became my compositions ¿Otra vez? (for Cristina), and Mozart Doesn’t Live in Seattle (for Vina).



I’m currently preparing an upcoming performance, Broken Bell, which intersperses pieces that include my own, with scenes from a play that Sean Harvey wrote specifically for this event. Getting to work with words, actors, musicians, sound - what could be better?

The premiere is on Monday, May 5, 2025 in Meany Theater, Seattle, WA.

Tell me a bit about the sounds & creative directions, artists & communities, as well as the colleagues & creative hotspots of your current hometown, please. How do they influence your music?

Seattle is known as a forward-thinking city. It is on the forefront of technology and research, and there is a sense of pride in its support of the arts. I teach at the University of Washington, which is home to a growing collection of musical artists who are ushering in the new.

In the dance world, Seattle’s ballet company, the amazing Pacific Northwest Ballet, is always pioneering new works and new choreographers. My husband, Michael Jinsoo Lim, is concertmaster and solo violinist for them. I wrote three works for him that all have a connection to dance that he included on his new album, Kinetic.

I’m grateful to be surrounded by wonderful artists, new art and to have the freedom to explore and experiment!

Composing has always had an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?

We’re all building on what came before us, even if we choose to reject the past. As a violist and composer, I embrace the love of spinning sound and the rich history of string playing. I strive to listen to the instrument itself in order to tell a story.

At the same time, I hope to find and incorporate new techniques into this fabric. I sometimes use notation and techniques that give an improvisatory feel to the music and as a sort of invitation to the performer to perhaps listen and create in a different way.

Last summer I was thrilled to be a part of a team working with the acclaimed artist Ron Arad for his multimedia art installation at the Royal Academy Exhibition, in London, titled The Quartet. I wrote Sphere for two violins.

Due to requirements of the art piece, I was interested in composing in such a way that the performers could play (and record) with little regard to vertical alignment - yet to still have understood and precise variables for the outcome as a whole.

I then developed this into my string quartet, Rapsodia.

What role do electronic tools and instruments play for your creative process? What does your creative space / studio look like and what tools does it contain?

I am a pencil and paper composer. In my day to day life, I have to use technology, however, I am not good at it! I’m grateful if my e-mail works. I do use my iPhone in the practice room and to test out compositional ideas. Having instant access for those processes, as well as to all of the information, performances, recordings and art online is a game-changer.

I’m in awe of what artists do with technology. Early in my career at the University of Washington I had the honor of commissioning a composition from Richard Karpen at the department of Digital Arts & Experimental Media (DXARTS). He wrote Aperture for amplified viola and interactive electronics.

The piece required that I wear an accelerometer on the wrist of my bow arm. I would play and the computer would react in real time. Their research team did a lot of work in developing the technology. It felt as if I had ten arms! That was a pivotal collaboration for me.

How, would you say are live performances of your music and your recording projects connected at the moment? How do they mutually influence and feed off each other?

I approach most, if not all, of my projects with both live performance and recording in mind.

Both modes are critical to me. Live concerts are essential for understanding what resonates with an audience and the energy contained in a phrase or texture. Recordings have been a passion of mine since I was a member of the Corigliano Quartet and we first began laying tracks down for composers.  

Are there approaches, artists, festivals, labels, spaces or anyone/-thing else out there who you feel deserve a shout out for taking composition into the future?

I’d like to give a shout out to my fellow violist/composers! There are many fabulous violists who are expanding the viola repertoire with commissions of new works and composing and performing their own works. Just to name a few, Atar Arad, Garth Knox and Leilehua Lanzilotti are artists that I am proud to call my friends and I’m very grateful for my collaborations with them.

Atar Arad is my beloved mentor. In 2021 he had the idea of creating a Partita Party where he invited four of his former viola students to each write a piece inspired by a movement from Bach’s D minor Partita. The viola composers were Atar, Yuval Gotlibovich, Duncan Steele, Rose Wollman and myself.

It was a joy to be together! We premiered the collaborative composition in October of 2023.

The Montreux Festival intends to preserve its archive of recordings for future generations. Do you personally feel it's important that everything should remain available forever - or is there something to be said for letting beautiful moments pass and linger in the memories of those that experienced them?

What a good question to keep in our minds. By nature, music is a fleeting experience.

The live performance can live in a special, flexible way. While recordings provide a different space and opportunity to dive deeply into reflection and study.  

There is a place for both things you describe: leaving behind something more permanent but also having the memories of inspiring live performances that we are lucky to experience.