Grammy® Award-winning composer Richard Danielpour has established himself as one of the most gifted and sought-after composers of his generation. His distinctive American musical voice is marked by large, romantic gestures, brilliant orchestration, intense expression and rhythmic vitality. His music has attracted an international and illustrious array of champions, and as a devoted mentor and educator, he has had a significant impact on the younger generation of composers within the last 35 years.

His list of commissions includes some of the most celebrated artists of our day, including Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman, Susan Graham, Dawn Upshaw, Emanuel Ax, Gil Shaham, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, Gary Graffman, Simone Dinnerstein, Anthony McGill, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, and the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets; the New York City, Pacific Northwest and Nashville Ballets; and institutions such as the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Mariinsky Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and many more.

With Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Danielpour created Margaret Garner, his first opera, which premiered in 2005 in a co-production by the opera companies of Detroit, Cincinnati and Philadelphia and later received a new production by New York City Opera. He has also collaborated with a number of celebrated writers, including Maya Angelou, Erica Jong, Rita Dove and Stephen Mitchell.

Danielpour’s many honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Lifetime Achievement Award and Charles Ives Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, two Rockefeller Foundation grants and the Bearns Prize from Columbia University. He has served on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music and the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he is a Distinguished Professor of Music and Chair of the Composition program, as of 2026.

Danielpour is one of the most recorded composers of his generation. His works have received 11 Grammy® nominations, and many of his recordings can be found on the Naxos of America and Sony Classical labels. Among them is The Passion of Yeshua, commissioned by the Oregon Bach Festival, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the SDG Foundation. JoAnn Falletta led the BPO and Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus in the work’s 2019 recording, which received three Grammy® nominations and won the 2021 Grammy® Award for Best Choral Performance.

Recent works include A Standing Witness, a 14-song monodrama setting poems by Rita Dove; An American Mosaic, written in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; Four Angels, commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the opera The Grand Hotel Tartarus, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2024. Danielpour’s 75-minute oratorio Francis: An Oratorio in Nine Scenes, based on the life of St. Francis of Assisi, receives its premiere with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in October 2026.

Danielpour’s music is published by Lean Kat Music and Associated Music Publishers.

For more information about Richard Danielpour, please visit www.Richard-Danielpour.com.