Biography
Now an established composer on the contemporary music scene, Missy Mazzoli's talent draws audiences equally into concert halls and rock clubs. Her unique music reflects a trend among composers of her generation who combine styles, writing music for the omnivorous audiences of the 21st century. She inhabits a gorgeous and mysterious sound-world that melds indie-rock sensibilities with formal training from Louis Andriessen, David Lang, Aaron Jay Kernis, Richard Ayres, and others. Practically speaking, she amasses music in layers not normally found together but in ways that create matchless vertical harmonies.
Recently deemed "one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York" by The New York Times, and "Brooklyn's post-millennial Mozart" by Time Out New York, her music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, JACK Quartet, eighth blackbird, LA Opera, Roomful of Teeth, Crash Ensemble, Britten Sinfonia, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Alabama Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Albany Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, Opera Philadelphia, New York City Opera, pianists Emanuel Ax, Shai Wosner, Michael Mizrahi and Kathleen Supové, cellist Maya Beiser, violinist Jennifer Koh, and many others. Her music has been featured at numerous festivals including the Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon and Ecstatic Music Festival (New York), the Cabrillo Festival (Santa Cruz), and the Gaudeamus New Music Festival (Amsterdam). She has served as Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theatre Group, been in residence with the Boulder Philharmonic (sponsored by New Music USA's Music Alive Program), and was a Composer-Educator Partner for the Albany Symphony.
Her chamber opera with librettist Royce Vavrek, Breaking the Waves, based on Lars von Trier's 1996 film was commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and will premiere in September 2016. Other recent projects include Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella Series (followed by an orchestral version for the Boulder Philharmonic), Vesper Sparrow for Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth, New New York Songs for the Young People's Chorus of New York; a solo piano piece, Bolts of Loving Thunder for Emanuel Ax; and Quartet for Queen Mab for ETHEL. Since its premiere in 2012 at The Kitchen in New York City, her critically-acclaimed multimedia chamber opera, Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, has received numerous performances including by LA Opera, Milwaukee Opera Theater, and Opera Philadelphia, and will be heard at Chautauqua Opera in August 2016.
Mazzoli is the recipient of 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 is also active as an educator and a mentor to young composers; in 2006 she taught composition in the Music Department of Yale University, and from 2007-2010 was Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York City, an organization dedicated to promoting the work of young composers. She is currently on the composition faculty of the Mannes College of Music, a division of the New School.
An active pianist, Mazzoli performs often with Victoire, an "all-star, all-female quintet" (Time Out New York) she founded in 2008 which is dedicated exclusively to her own compositions. Their debut full-length CD, "Cathedral City" (New Amsterdam Records) was named one of 2010's best classical albums by Time Out New York, NPR, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and their 2015 follow up, "Vespers for a New Dark Age," was deemed "ravishing and unsettling" by The New York Times. Mazzoli attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, and Boston University. Her principal teachers were Louis Andriessen, Martijn Padding, Richard Ayres, David Lang, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Charles Fussell, Richard Cornell, Martin Amlin, and John Harbison.
Missy Mazzoli's music is published by G. Schirmer, Inc.