“Like field recordings from inside the cerebral cortex”
(Timeout Chicago)
Her "arresting imagination came through in the pungent details of the piece"
(The New York Times)
"from the first note to the last, the program mesmerized me."
(Oberon's Grove)
Photo by Luke Redmond
Suzanne Farrin is a composer whose works have been performed around the world. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times called her first opera, dolce la morte, a work of “shattering honesty.” Her debut recording, Corpo di Terra, was described in Timeout Chicago, “like field recordings from inside the cerebral cortex.” Recent commissions include works for The Parker Quartet, Talea, The Library of Congress, Sō Percussion, JACK Quartet, and The International Contemporary Ensemble. She was a 2018 Rome Prize Winner and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in Composition.
Her music has been featured at venues and festivals including The BBC Proms, Mostly Mozart, The Gothenburg Art Biennial, Matrix, Alpenklassik, Music in Würzburg, BAM NextWave, Theaterforum (Germany), Town Hall Seattle, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Symphony Space, Wigmore Hall, The National Theater of Tiachung, Taiwan, Ojai Festival, among many others.
In addition to composing, Suzanne is a performer of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument created by the engineer Maurice Martenot in the 1920s as a response to the simultaneous destruction and technological advances of WWI. Her life as an interpreter on the instrument has taken her to venues such as the Abrons Arts Center in NYC, Centro de Artes in Buenos Aires, as well as film and television. She has performed in film scores such as Chicuarotes (Gael Garcia Bernal, director), Sade Ma’bar/Blockage (Mohsen Gharaie, director), and USERS (Natalia Almada, director), which was featured at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. She appears as herself in an episode of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle (Roman Coppola, director).
Suzanne is the Frayda B. Lindemann Chair of Music at Hunter College and The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center, where she teaches composition. She has been the lead mentor composer for Evolution: Quartet at the Banff Centre since 2021. She holds a doctorate in from Yale University. Her next opera, Macabéa, based on a book by Clarice Lispector, will be premiered at the Theatro São Pedro in São Paolo, Brazil in 2025 and is supported by the Siemens Foundation and the Consolate General of Brazil in New York. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and 2018 Rome Prize Winner.
You can read a review of her 2023 Miller Theater Composer Portrait here.
Her music has been featured at venues and festivals including The BBC Proms, Mostly Mozart, The Gothenburg Art Biennial, Matrix, Alpenklassik, Music in Würzburg, BAM NextWave, Theaterforum (Germany), Town Hall Seattle, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Symphony Space, Wigmore Hall, The National Theater of Tiachung, Taiwan, Ojai Festival, among many others.
In addition to composing, Suzanne is a performer of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument created by the engineer Maurice Martenot in the 1920s as a response to the simultaneous destruction and technological advances of WWI. Her life as an interpreter on the instrument has taken her to venues such as the Abrons Arts Center in NYC, Centro de Artes in Buenos Aires, as well as film and television. She has performed in film scores such as Chicuarotes (Gael Garcia Bernal, director), Sade Ma’bar/Blockage (Mohsen Gharaie, director), and USERS (Natalia Almada, director), which was featured at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. She appears as herself in an episode of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle (Roman Coppola, director).
Suzanne is the Frayda B. Lindemann Chair of Music at Hunter College and The C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center, where she teaches composition. She has been the lead mentor composer for Evolution: Quartet at the Banff Centre since 2021. She holds a doctorate in from Yale University. Her next opera, Macabéa, based on a book by Clarice Lispector, will be premiered at the Theatro São Pedro in São Paolo, Brazil in 2025 and is supported by the Siemens Foundation and the Consolate General of Brazil in New York. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and 2018 Rome Prize Winner.
You can read a review of her 2023 Miller Theater Composer Portrait here.
at Oktaven Studios.
The premiere of dolce la morte in the MET Museum, directed by Doug Fitch.
Photo by Stephanie Berger
with Claire Chase, performing The Stimulus of Loss.
Anthony Roth Costanzo and ICE Performing Serenade at the Mostly Mozart Festival (NY Times).
with Jakob Kirkegaard for the premiere of Ondes Corti at the Gothenburg Biennial, 2015.
The New Juilliard Ensemble performing Undecim at MoMA (NY Times).
with past and present composition students at The Stone.
(Thank you, John Zorn!)
