User:Mollysjoyce/Missy Mazzoli

Missy Mazzoli is an American composer and pianist living in Brooklyn, New York who has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral and operatic work. Her first chamber opera Song from the Uproar, based on the life of Swiss explorer Isabelle Eberhardt and featuring a libretto by Royce Vavrek, premiered to a sold-out crowd at New York City venue The Kitchen in March 2012. She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band dedicated to performing her music. She is currently the composer-in-residence at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Her music is published by G. Schirmer.

Education
Mazzoli holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University. Her teachers include David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, Martijn Padding, and John Harbison.

In 2006 Mazzoli 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.

Concert/Recorded Work
Mazzoli’s music has been performed globally by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the Minnesota Orchestra, violinist Jennifer Koh, cellist Maya Beiser, NOW Ensemble, the American Composers Orchestra, the South Carolina Philharmonic, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble and many others in venues including Carnegie Hall and the Sydney Opera House. She is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and in 2011/12 was Composer/Educator in residence with the Albany Symphony.

Upcoming projects include premieres by Ensemble ACJW at Carnegie Hall, the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall and the Detroit Symphony. Mazzoli is the recipient of 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.

Victoire
Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and often performs with Victoire, a band she founded in 2008 dedicated to her own compositions. Their 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. In the past few years they have played in venues all over the world including Radialsystem in Berlin, Millennium Park in Chicago, The Winter Garden in New York as part of the Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon, Overtoom 301 in Amsterdam, The Music Gallery in Toronto and Le Poisson Rouge in New York, as part of the Wordless Music Series. In February 2011 they joined The National, Owen Pallett and Efterklang on a tour of the Netherlands as part of the Cross-Linx Festival, and in November 2011 joined My Brightest Diamond for performances in Belgium and Paris. Pitchfork praised Victoire for “condensing moments of focused beauty and quiet conviction from the pandemic distractions of modern life“, WNYC dubbed the group “consuming and arresting“, and NPR’s First Listen asks “Is Victoire’s music post-rock, post-mimimalist or pseudo-post-pre-modernist indie-chamber-electronica? It doesn’t particularly matter. It’s just good music."

Song from the Uproar
Mazzoli's first opera, Song from the Uproar, based on the life of Swiss explorer and writer Isabelle Eberhardt, premiered in a sold-out run at New York venue The Kitchen in March 2012. The piece was created in collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek, filmmaker Stephen Taylor and director Gia Forakis. 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.”

On November 13, 2012 the original cast recording of Mazzoli was released on New Amsterdam Records.

SALT
A 20-minute retelling of the story of Lot’s Wife for voice, cello and electronics, SALT was performed at the 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival in Brooklyn and at UNC Chapel Hill. Composed for cellist Maya Beiser and vocalist Helga Davis, SALT was directed by famed American director Robert Woodruff and includes text by Erin Cressida-Wilson.

Critical Reception
Mazzoli has been praised by the New York Times as “one of the more consistently inventive and surprising composers now working in New York”, and has been hailed as “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” by Time Out New York. On November 23, 2012, Mazzoli was a featured artist on NPR's All Things Considered.