Jake Landau (b. 1995) is an American composer with a uniquely genre-spanning career focused in new classical music and musical theater. His works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Houston Grand Opera, and Tony Award-winning Broadway stars in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, Birdland Jazz Club, and the Royal Palace of Amsterdam.

After his undergraduate studies at The Juilliard School under composer John Corigliano, Landau received his master’s degree from Oxford University with First Class Honours. Along the way, and as a composition fellow at summer institutions including the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, Landau created his core body of work in contemporary classical chamber and vocal music. At the same time, he worked in premier pop music studios, experimental queer nightclubs, and as a pianist for both opera and Broadway productions. This unusual background led him to a sound that at turns explores and ignores genre, in which hit-factory hooks interact with the concept-driven architectures of classical music.

In addition to his composing, Landau is an accomplished lyricist, orchestrator, music director, and Early Music keyboardist, having arranged music for a wide range of performers from Baroque cellists and indie rockers to NBC. In 2025, he was commissioned to write two singles for the album In This Short Life (Lexicon Classics), which would go on to earn a Grammy nomination. 2026 saw Landau’s Off-Broadway debut with an adaptation of The Threepenny Opera.

Landau is the youngest-ever winner of the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; one of NYFOS’S (New York Festival of Song) “9 under 34” composers; founding director of the New Voice Festival’s Composers Studio; a Clarendon Scholar of Oxford University; and an Extension-Division faculty member of composition at Juilliard in New York, where he is based full-time. Landau’s work is published by Just A Theory Press, while select pieces are published by G. Schirmer and Edition Peters.