Missy Mazzoli

About

Missy Mazzoli has built one of the more distinctive voices in contemporary classical music, blending electro acoustic textures with chamber, orchestral and operatic forms in ways critics have consistently found hard to categorize and impossible to ignore. Her opera Breaking the Waves, adapted from Lars von Trier's film, won the inaugural Music Critics Association of North America Award for Best New Opera and drew comparisons to Messiaen, Britten and Janáček while still sounding entirely like herself. In 2018 she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera. She fronts the electro acoustic band Victoire, and her 2015 album Vespers for a New Dark Age, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and featuring Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, shows how naturally she moves between the concert hall and something closer to a band setting. Her orchestral recording Dark with Excessive Bright picked up two Grammy nominations in 2024, including Best Classical Composition for her violin concerto. She teaches composition at Bard College and her music is published by G. Schirmer.