Missy Mazzoli

In all of my work I explore mysterious and intense aspects of human experience. I am at a crucial point where I feel the need to deepen and expand these explorations, and to that end have been working on a series of large-scale dramatic works about modern American life. My goal in making these works is to connect listeners and fellow artists by exploring a shared American experience that is often difficult, surprising and overwhelming.

Proving Up (2018), an opera based on the short story by Karen Russell, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek. commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and Miller Theatre

Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (NY Times) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), Missy Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Kronos Quartet, LA Opera, eighth blackbird, the BBC Symphony, Scottish Opera and many others. In 2018 she became one of the first two women, along with Jeanine Tesori, to receive a main stage commission from the Metropolitan Opera, and was nominated for a Grammy award. From 2018-2021 she was Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and from 2012-2015 was Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia. In 2016, along with composer Ellen Reid she founded Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for female, non-binary and gender nonconforming composers in their teens. In 2021 she was named Musical America’s “Composer of the Year”. Upcoming commissions include works for Opera Philadelphia, the National Ballet of Canada, Chicago Lyric Opera and Norwegian National Opera. She currently teaches at the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan, and her works are published by G. Schirmer.