Haitian-American composer, flutist, and interdisciplinary artist Nathalie Joachim has cultivated an international career that balances virtuosic performance with a deeply personal compositional voice. Her work is grounded in storytelling and human connection, often engaging questions of identity, transformation, and social change. Joachim’s recent and current projects include appearances as composer-in-residence with Opera Philadelphia and collaborations with the Museum of Modern Art and the New York Philharmonic on material from her forthcoming opera Le présent éternel. Additional premieres include the multimedia work Solitude + S P A C E at Princeton Sound Kitchen and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, as well as new works for the London Sinfonietta/Holland Festival and the Jacksonville Symphony. She is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at Princeton University.

Commissioned by Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival, Cocoon premiered on July 24, 2024, under the direction of Eric Jacobsen. As Joachim described in a conversation with Jacobsen prior to the performance, the work evokes the “retreat and transformed emergence of a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly—kinetic energy behind outward stasis—and analogous experiences in human beings” (Chicago Classical Review). Joachim’s concept comes to life through delicate instrumental textures, subtle repetitions, and layered sound worlds, inviting listeners to experience transformation as both vulnerable and sustaining.