MISSY MAZZOLI, "the 21st century's gatecrasher of new classical music", as she’s been described. The American composer, born 1980, she's one of the two first women to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, and is the first person woman or man to win the inaugural Music Critics award for best opera in 2017.
She’s probably best known for opera, currently writing Lincoln in the Bardo for the Met for 2026, and is commissioned by all the top American opera companies and orchestras all over the world from the New York Phil to the BBC Symphony to the Norwegian National Opera. She’s one of the composers for Mozart in the Jungle on tele, does a lot of film and TV work. Musical America’s Composer-of-the-Year 2022, nominated for a Grammy, currently composer in residence at Bard College - and all this, from growing up in small town Pennsylvania in a non-musical family. The only musician!
She says:
"It’s not just that most composers are male, or most composers are dead, or most composers are white. It’s that they all are, until so recently. And that’s the first hurdle to overcome because it’s not an idea that is going away as quickly as it needs to"
MUSIC: Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
