Missy Mazzoli is the 21st century’s gatecrasher of new classical music.
NPR’s Turning the Tables
The unleashing of Mazzoli’s apocalyptic imagination on the huge Met stage is an occasion eagerly awaited.
Alex Ross, The New Yorker
Proving Up is “harrowing...powerful...a true opera of our time.”
Washington Post
Missy Mazzoli is “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart.”
Time Out New York
Missy Mazzoli’s Harp and Altar [for the Kronos Quartet] offers further evidence that she is among the more consistently inventive and surprising composers now working in New York.
The New York Times
Missy Mazzoli's Breaking the Waves is savage, heartbreaking and thoroughly original.
Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal
Breaking the Waves stands among the best 21st-century American operas yet.
David Shengold, Opera News
“Mazzoli is a once-in-a-generation magician of the orchestra… [The Listeners] is perhaps her most original work to date… sinuously songful vocal lines; furtively expressive instrumental solos; a harmonic language that finds newness and strangeness in the interstices of traditional tonality; unerring narrative pacing.”
Missy Mazzoli featured on Radiolab’s episode The Cataclysm Sentence. Summary: One day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this…
“…Nézet-Séguin, who launched his tenure by commissioning operas from composers Missy Mazzoli and Jeanine Tesori (the first women to create new work for the Met in the company’s 140-year history;…
“What happens when you add sound to such formidably oppressive filmic hush? The New York composer Missy Mazzoli has spent years grappling with that question. ‘Back in 2013,’ she says, ‘my…
“The runners up for this year’s award are “An American Soldier” by composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang; and “Proving Up” by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce…
“Best New Work: Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative had not produced a new opera that could be called great—until this year. Missy Mazzoli, a composer with a major success…
“…Missy Mazzoli continued her ascendance as one of the most prominent and badass voices in the field. Her latest opera, “Proving Up,” premiered at the Washington National Opera in January, and…
“…Meanwhile, the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera unveiled dramatic new programming developments under their respective new music directors, Jaap Van Zweden and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The orchestra had a bold…
“Mazzoli’s third full-length opera, Proving Up, recently closed its acclaimed New York run, and she’s emerging from the whirlwind. Based on a short story by Swamplandia! author Karen Russell, Proving Up examines the American…
“Composer Missy Mazzoli is at the top of her game. Having just premiered her third opera, Proving Up, to wide acclaim, Mazzoli was recently commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera; one of…
“Missy Mazzoli, 38, is trying to tear down the gates for new composers and listeners. She’s a prominent figure in new music; she has three operas to her name with…
“Karen Russell’s short story “Proving Up” is a bleak tale about one such family trying to earn their plot in post-Civil War Nebraska. And it’s now been adapted into a…
“With the New York premiere of “Proving Up,” at the Miller Theater on Sept. 26 and 28, the composer Missy Mazzoli has that contemporary musical miracle: a hotly anticipated third opera, a…
“So far in her impressive career, the music of composer Missy Mazzoli has mostly defied labels. Categorizations like “multimedia” or the more flattering “dynamic amalgamation” carry little weight with the 37-year-old New…
“I think my music is very narrative or cinematic at times,” [Mazzoli] says. “Even my instrumental music usually tells some sort of story. I’m always thinking about the psychology behind…
“The music of Missy Mazzoli is a treat in and of itself and that is especially the case in collaboration with Royce Vavrek. It’s a rarity to see a tale…
“Mazzoli’s music, though clearly contemporary, nevertheless fit the setting and the mood of the opera. And Vavrek’s libretto spoke volumes with relatively few well-chosen words.”
“[Mazzoli] defines her life purpose as “helping people connect to emotions or experiences through music, and enabling more young people, particularly women, to express themselves through composition.” Mazzoli lives out…
“…it was “Proving Up” that left me ruminating in its wake, torn between an experience that was in many ways deliberately unpleasant and the power of the statement its creators…
“In the new music world, however, Mazzoli is less a black sheep than a sacred cow: an “it” girl of the contemporary scene. Seven or eight years ago, she started…
“Already an established fixture on the Brooklyn scene with her band, Victoire, the 36-year-old Mazzoli came to the attention of a wider audience in 2016 with her second opera, “Breaking…
“The opera unfolded like a dream against a bare set consisting of hanging scrims, subtle lighting and a single tree, The music began with a static sound, like an old,…
“I feel very happy to be a role model for young women,” said Mazzoli. “Every day I get email or phone calls from female composers around the world looking for…
“In her two full-length operas to date, Mazzoli has turned her inventive and daring approach to the subject of young women who take risks and make sacrifices to enter the…
“It is not easy to find new operas that command attention, tell their story lucidly, and create a powerful, permeating mood. Dark and daring, Breaking the Waves does all this…
