Birgitte Alsted graduated as a violinist from the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen as well as the Warsaw Music Academy. Since 1972 she has also been active as a composer. Asserting herself within the field of electronic music, she often expresses herself creatively through the incorporation of other art forms. As a result of this, she has often worked in the world of theatre and performance/dance. In addition to music for theatre, her oeuvre includes works for soloists and chamber orchestras; very often these works are structured in an unusual manner, incorporating acoustic instruments as well as computers and tapes.
She also frequently works with multimedia performances in which the use of electronics, lyrics, dance, and slides are combined. In this process, literature and poetry – new as well as old – are important sources of inspiration for her.
Birgitte Alsted was a member of the Danish Music Council and a member of the society “Kvinder i Musik” (“Women in Music”). In addition to this, Alsted co-founded the “Group for Alternative Music”. In 1980 she received a three-year scholarship from the Danish Arts Foundation, and in 1992 she was awarded the Hakon Børresen Prize and she has received the prestigious Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen Foundation's Prize (2017).
