Missy Mazzoli Is Undaunted

Missy Mazzoli's Orpheus Alive, her first work composed explicitly for dance, runs November 15-21, 2019, in Toronto. Choreographed by National Ballet of Canada Choreographic Associate Robert Binet, the work flips the script of the classic tale by casting Orpheus as a woman and Eurydice as a man. The project provided Mazzoli with the opportunity to play around creatively with an iconic myth, switching up genders and flexing her musical, dramatic and storytelling muscles without the structure of a libretto. For a taste of the music and choreography, have a look:

Later this season, Orpheus Undone, an orchestral suite drawn from the music of Orpheus Alive, will premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Mazzoli is Mead Composer-in-Residence (April 30; May 1-3).

Mazzoli's bass concerto, Dark with Excessive Bright, received its US premiere with St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (November 1) and travels to the San Francisco Symphony for its West Coast premiere this weekend (November 17). Mazzoli will curate one of the SFS's acclaimed Soundbox series concerts in February 2020. This season, Mazzoli stepped up as Composer & Artist in Residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, where Dark with Excessive Bright will be performed in May of 2020.

Meanwhile, she completes her second and final year as Mead Composer in Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where she curates four of the CSO’s 2019-20 MusicNow concerts. In that series and in regular classical subscription concerts, the CSO will perform several of Mazzoli’s works this year, including Ecstatic Science and Orpheus Undone orchestral suite based on material from her ballet. Elsewhere in the concert hall, orchestras across the United States and Europe perform Mazzoli’s works this season. The Orchestra of the National Opera of Bordeaux performed River Rouge Transfiguration in October, and the Colorado Symphony performs Holly Roller in January.

This past August (2019), her acclaimed opera Breaking the Waves was reinvigorated and critically embraced in a new production directed by Bristol Old Vic’s Artistic Director Tom Morris as part of Scotland's Edinburgh International Festival. Based on the 1996 Lars von Trier film by the same title, Breaking the Waves is set on Scotland’s remote northern Isle of Skye. The new production will arrive in New York in June 2020 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 

Mazzoli is featured this month on PBS's Articulate, produced by WHYY in Philadelphia, where she speaks about her trailblazing career and her fearless approach to her forthcoming opera, Lincoln in the Bardo, based on George Saunders's eponymous novel, a commission from the Metropolitan Opera that, alongside a commission from composer Jeanine Tesori, marks the first time in its history the famed institution has commissioned works by female composers. 

Lincoln in the Bardo will be Mazzoli’s second operatic adaptation of a work by a major American literary figure: her 2018 opera, Proving Up, was based on a short story by Karen Russell, best-selling author of Swamplandia! Mazolli is also currently writing an opera based on an original story created with her frequent collaborator and librettist Royce Vavrek that will premiere in Europe in 2021. 

The Metropolitan’s confidence in Mazzoli’s operatic chops were likely inspired by the success in 2016 of Breaking the Waves, which was originally commissioned and premiered by Opera Philadelphia. In his review of the opera in the New York Times, Zachary Woolfe described it as “ambitious, accomplished, dramatically direct.” 

At 15, Missy Mazzoli was teaching tap dance lessons to little kids in her hometown of Lansdale, PA, just outside Philadelphia, when she noticed an ad on the dance studio’s bulletin board for composition lessons. Despite the fact that she’d been creating her own music since she was a little girl, Mazzoli had never considered that composition could be studied formally. The concept excited her, and she jumped at the opportunity, learning the basics from a local percussionist in The Philly Pops orchestra. That early learning experience was revelatory for Mazzoli, who says she instantly felt at home studying composition and attending orchestra rehearsals with her high school teacher. “I’d found my people. I’d found my world. This was all that I wanted,” the composer recalls. 

Mazzoli’s music is an inspiration to young women and teens who, like she did at 15, need encouragement, role models and teachers to help them realize their own compositional dreams. Luna Composition Lab, the non-profit she co-founded with composer Ellen Reid to encourage self-identifying girls and young women to compose, is thriving during its fourth season, expanding its reach and growing its infrastructure. In addition to mentoring and providing them with practical resources, Mazzoli’s own groundbreaking career serves as a model for young female-identifying composers. Since 2010, Mazzoli’s music has been published by major classical music publisher G. Schirmer, Inc., an example of the respect she garnered early in her career.

At 15, Mazzoli knew she’d found her passion. As she continues to live that dream, her life, work and career serve as an inspiration for future composers, and she continues to shine as one of the essential musical voices of her generation.

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Sarah Knight