Missy Mazzoli

MISSY (Melissa) MAZZOLI Missy Mazzoli is a delinquent tap dancer turned insomniac composer, whose influences range from Beethoven to Balinese Gamelan. She writes for melodicas, out-of-tune guitars and electronics as well as orchestras and string quartets to create a truly unique sound. At a recent performance of her work by the Minnesota Orchestra, James Oestreich of the New York Times singled out her piece These Worlds In Us as the best piece on the program. In the past year her music has been performed by NOW Ensemble, Newspeak, Present Music, Dinosaur Annex and ALEA III, and was a featured performer at Amsterdam's Gaudeamus Festival of New Music, where she performed with her electro-acoustic band, Hills Not Skyscrapers. In 2002 Missy received a Fulbright Grant and traveled to the Netherlands, where she worked with composer Louis Andriessen. In March, 2006 Missy was a featured composer and performer at New York City's Merkin Hall, as part of their Ear Department: Emerging Composers Series. In 2004 she was composer-in-residence at STEIM, Amsterdam's center for electronic music, where she created electro-acoustic works for the Insomnio Ensemble. She has received additional grants from the American Music Center and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is active as a pianist as well, and has performed with Modelo 62 and Amsterdam's Collision Palace as well as Hills Not Skyscrapers. In 2005, along with composers Judd Greenstein and David T. Little and filmmaker Stephen Taylor, Missy founded Free Speech Zone Productions (http://www.fszproductions.com), an organization dedicated to bringing new music to broad audiences. Together they are working on (in)visible, a multimedia documentary-opera that will premiere in New York in November, 2007. Missy is a graduate of the Yale School of Music (MM 2006), the Royal Conservatory in the Hague (2004) and Boston University (BM 2002). She has studied with David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis and John Harbison, among others. She is currently teaching composition at Yale University. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.