Christopher Cerrone
Winner of a 2015 Rome Prize and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, the Brooklyn-based composer Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions which range from opera to orchestral, from chamber music to electronic. Throughout, his music is characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations.

In the current season, Cerrone has world premieres of his new piece for string quartet Can’t and Won’t with the Calder Quartet for the LA Phil; a new percussion quartet piece for Miller Theatre as part of a Cerrone Composer Portrait performed by Third Coast Percussion; and a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony, led by Leonard Slatkin. His music will be performed this season by the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, and at the MITO SettembreMusica Festival in Turin and Milan, Italy.

Recent highlights include world premieres with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (for Jeffrey Kahane’s final concert as LACO Music Director); Third Coast Percussion and Rachel Calloway for the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center; and an electroacoustic work for Tim Munro at Miller Theatre. Cerrone has also had recent commissions from Eighth Blackbird, Vicky Chow, and has works featured on new releases from New Amsterdam Records, VIA Records, and on an all-Cerrone album from Christopher Rountree and wild Up.

Other recent commissions include The Naomi Songs for Theo Bleckmann and the Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire; live original scores for installations at the New Museum and the Time Warner Center by artist and filmmaker Marco Brambilla; and a new work for the Cornell Glee Club, among others.

Cerrone’s opera, Invisible Cities, based on Italo Calvino’s landmark novel, was praised by The Los Angeles Times as “A delicate and beautiful opera…[which] could be, and should be, done anywhere.” Invisible Cities received its fully staged world premiere in a wildly popular production by The Industry, directed by Yuval Sharon in Los Angeles’ Union Station. It was released in 2014 as a commercial recording on The Industry’s in-house label, and reissued in 2017 with a DVD of the filmed version of this landmark production. His upcoming opera In a Grove with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann had its first workshop with Mahogany Opera Group at the 2017 Various Stages Festival.

Christopher Cerrone is one-sixth of the Sleeping Giant composer collective, with whom he served as co-composer-in-residence at the Albany Symphony from 2014-2017. He holds degrees from the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and is published by Schott NY and Project Schott New York.