Missy Mazzoli

• Born: October 27, 1980, Lansdale, Pennsylvania

Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)

• Composed: Original chamber version, 2014, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic; orchestral version, 2016, for a Music Alive Composer Residency with the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
• Premiere: Chamber version, April 8, 2014, Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic; orchestra version, February 12, 2016, by the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra 
• Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons (incl. harmonicas), 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, harmonicas, boombox sound effect, glockenspiel, lion’s roar, marimba, melodica, opera gong, snare drum, spring coil, suspended cymbals, vibraphone, piano, strings
• CSO notable performances: These performances are the work’s CSO premiere.
• Duration: approx. 12 minutes

Nominated for a 2019 Grammy for the recording of her Vespers for Violin, Missy Mazzoli has been deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (NY Times) and “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out NY), and has been praised for her “apocalyptic imagination” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker). Mazzoli has had her music performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (which co-commissioned her Violin Concerto (Procession) and performed the work with violinist Jennifer Koh—for whom the concerto was written—in March 2022), Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, pianist Emanuel Ax, Opera Philadelphia, Scottish Opera, LA Opera, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Chicago Fringe Opera, the Detroit Symphony, the LA Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, JACK Quartet, cellist Maya Beiser, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianist Kathleen Supové, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, the Sydney Symphony and many others. In 2018 she became one of the first two women, along with Jeanine Tesori, to receive a main stage commission from The Metropolitan Opera. She was Mead Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2018 to 2021 and Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia from 2012 to 2015. Recent commissions include works for Opera Philadelphia, the National Ballet of Canada, Chicago Lyric Opera and Norwegian National Opera. 

Mazzoli attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University. Her works are published by G. Schirmer.

Of her Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), Mazzoli writes:

Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) is music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit. The word “sinfonia” refers to baroque works for chamber orchestra but also to the old Italian term for a hurdy-gurdy, a medieval stringed instrument with constant, wheezing drones that are cranked out under melodies played on an attached keyboard. It’s a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed, in the process transforming the ensemble turns into a makeshift hurdy-gurdy, flung recklessly into space. Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and later expanded for a concert with the Boulder Philharmonic.

—Compiled by Teri McKibben