Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York) and “one of the new wave of scarily smart young composers” (sequenza21.com), Missy Mazzoli’s music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the American Composers Orchestra, New York City Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the South Carolina Philharmonic, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, New York City’s NOW Ensemble and many others. She is currently Composer/Educator in residence with the Albany Symphony, a position funded by the Mellon Foundation, and the Detroit Symphony recently awarded her the 2011 Elaine Lebenbom Award.
2012 will include many exciting new projects, including the February premiere of Missy’s first multimedia chamber opera Song from the Uproar at venerable New York venue The Kitchen. Excerpts of this new work, based on the life and writings of Swiss explorer Isabelle Eberhardt, were previously performed by New York City Opera as part of their VOX series, and by students at the Bard College Conservatory under the direction of Dawn Upshaw. As part of Missy’s 2011/2012 residency with the Albany Symphony, the orchestra will premiere a new work in May 2012, and the Detroit Symphony will premiere a new orchestral work in Fall, 2012. October 2012 will also see the premiere of SALT, Missy’s new multimedia collaboration with cellist Maya Beiser and writer Erin Cressida-Wilson, based on the biblical story of Lot’s wife. 2012 will also include performances by the Britten Sinfonia and Kronos Quartet at London’s Barbican Centre.
Recent projects include new works for eighth blackbird, Kronos Quartet, the League of Composers Orchestra, violinist Jennifer Koh (a new solo work commissioned by the LA Philharmonic), the Santa Fe Chamber Players, violist Nadia Sirota, Ensemble ACJW (commissioned by Carnegie Hall), Present Music (Milwaukee), and scores to accompany films by Alice Guy Blaché, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of Art.
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. 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.
Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and often performs with Victoire, an “all-star, all-female quintet” (Time Out New York) she founded in 2008 dedicated exclusively 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 (Berlin), Millennium Park (Chicago), The Winter Garden (New York, as part of the Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon), Overtoom 301 (Amsterdam), The Music Gallery (Toronto) and Le Poisson Rouge (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 (Shara Worden) 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.”
Missy attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University.
Her music is published by G. Schirmer.
