Missy Mazzoli

Grammy-nominated composer Missy Mazzoli was recently deemed "one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York" (The New York Times). Her music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, Dublin's Crash Ensemble pianist Emanuel Ax, Opera Philadelphia, Scottish Opera, Opera Comique, Opera Australia, LA Opera, Cincinnati Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, LA Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the BBC Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Sydney Symphony, JACK Quartet, violinist Jennifer Koh, mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, and many others. In 2018 she made history when she became one of the first two women to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera for the forthcoming Lincoln in the Bardo. That year she was also nominated for a Grammy in the category of "Best Classical Composition" for her work Vespers for Violin, recorded by violinist Olivia De Prato.

Highlights of the 2024-25 season include the US premiere of her opera The Listeners at Opera Philadelphia in September and Lyric Opera of Chicago in March and the German premiere in Essen; Breaking the Waves at Houston Grand Opera; Orpheus Undone with the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Lahti Symphony; Dark With Excessive Bright in its Austrian premiere, and numerous international performances of her orchestral and chamber repertoire.

Mazzoli has received considerable acclaim for her operatic compositions, created with her longtime collaborator the Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek. Her most recent opera, The Listeners, (commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, Norwegian National Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera) was created with Vavrek and playwright Jordan Tannahill. It premiered in September 2022 in Oslo in a production directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz. The Listeners is an original story about our search for community and meaning, and the power of charismatic leaders who exploit these desires. Her third opera, Proving Up (commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and New York's Miller Theatre) is based on a short story by Karen Russell and offers a surreal and disquieting commentary on the American dream through the story of a 19th century Nebraskan homesteading family. The Washington Post called it "harrowing…powerful…a true opera of our time". Their second opera, Breaking the Waves, was described as "among the best 21st-century operas yet" (Opera News), "savage, heartbreaking and thoroughly original" (Wall Street Journal), and "dark and daring" (The New York Times). Earlier projects include the critically acclaimed sold-out premiere of Mazzoli's first opera, Song from the Uproar, in a Beth Morrison production in March 2012. The Wall Street Journal called this work "powerful and new”, and The New York Times claimed that "in the electric surge of Ms. Mazzoli's score you felt the joy, risk, and limitless potential of free sprits unbound." In October 2012, Missy's dramatic chamber work, SALT, with text by Erin Cressida-Wilson, is a re-telling of the story of Lot's Wife written for cellist Maya Beiser and vocalist Helga Davis and premiered as part of the BAM Next Wave Festival and at UNC Chapel Hill, directed by Robert Woodruff.

Mazzoli served as the Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from July 2018 to April 2021. From 2012-2015 she was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and Music Theatre-Group. She is currently on faculty as Composer-in- Residence with the Bard College Conservatory of Music. In 2016, along with composer Ellen Reid, Mazzoli founded Luna Composition Lab, an acclaimed mentorship program and support network for female, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers ages 13-19.

Recent noteworthy performances include new productions of Breaking the Waves at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Adelaide Festival, Paris' Opera Comique, Opera St. Gallen, Vadstena Akademien, and Stadttheater Bremerhaven; numerous productions of Proving Up including The Juilliard School, Opera Las Vegas and the Aspen Music Festival; the world premiere of two ballets choreographed by Rob Binet: Dark with Excessive Bright and Orpheus Alive, a new ballet score commissioned and premiered by the National Ballet of Canada; the premiere of Violin Concerto: Procession with soloist Jennifer Koh and the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington), Cincinnati Symphony and the BBC Proms; the world premiere of Millennium Canticles by Third Coast Percussion; the US premieres of her double bass concerto Dark with Excessive Bright with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the violin version with the Atlanta Symphony. Mazzoli has curated concerts with the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony. In the 2023-24 season she was the focus of a BBC Total Immersion weekend and featured composer with Winnipeg Symphony New Music Festival.

Mazzoli is an active TV and film composer and wrote and performed music for the fictional character Thomas Pembridge on the Amazon TV show Mozart in the Jungle. She also contributed music to the documentaries Detropia and Book of Conrad and the film A Woman, A Part.

In 2023 the Arctic Philharmonic released the Grammy-nominated all-Mazzoli CD on the BIS label, featuring the violin version of Dark With Excessive Bright with soloist Peter Herresthal; the Iceland Symphony released a recording of Sinfonia for Orbiting Spheres; and Third Coast Percussion released the premiere recording Millennium Canticles. In 2022 Deutsche Gramophone released Emily D'Angelo's debut recording enargeia singing new arrangements of works created by the composer specifically for this recording. Her music has also been released on labels including New Amsterdam, Pentatone, Cedille, Bedroom Community, 4AD and Innova. Artists who have recorded Mazzoli's music include eighth blackbird, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Roomful of Teeth, violinist Jennifer Koh, violist Nadia Sirota, NOW Ensemble, Newspeak, pianist Kathleen Supové, the Jasper Quartet, and violinist Joshua Bell.

Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and performs with Victoire, a band she founded in 2008 dedicated to her own compositions and in duo concerts with Jennifer Koh. Victorie’s debut full-length CD, Cathedral City, was named one of 2010′s best classical albums by Time Out New York, NPR, The New Yorker and The New York Times, and was followed by the critically acclaimed Vespers for a New Dark Age, a collaboration with percussionist Glenn Kotche. The New York Times called Vespers for a New Dark Age "ravishing and unsettling", and the album was praised on NPR's First Listen, All Things Considered and Pitchfork.

Mazzoli is the recipient of the Musical America 2022 Composer of the Year honor, multiple Grammy nomination, the 2017 Music Critics Association of America Inaugural Award for Best Opera, the 2018 Godard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, a Fulbright Grant to The Netherlands, the Detroit Symphony's Elaine Lebenbom Award, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, and the Barlow Endowment. She has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ucross, VCCA, the Blue Mountain Center and the Hermitage. She and Royce Vavrek were honored with the 2023 Marc Blitzstein Award for Musical Theater and Opera, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Missy attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University. 

Her music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer.

— September 2024