Grammy-nominated composer and North Penn `98 alum performs on NPR 'Tiny Desk Concert,' pushes for more female, non-binary composers

Tony Di Domizio | North Penn Now•

In North Penn High School’s 1998 Accolade yearbook, there is a page titled "Field of Dreams.” Among the black and white pictures of high school life is a big text box where some gifted and talented students were interviewed about their aspirations.

In the text’s penultimate paragraph, we are introduced to "very musical” senior Missy Mazzoli.

"These highly gifted people,” wrote yearbook editor Meagan Hopper, "often succeeded presently in the same career choice for their future.”

At this point in her high school career, National Honor Society student Mazzoli had already auditioned her symphony at Carnegie Hall.

"It was so incredible … that one day I hope to be a recognized composer,” she said in her yearbook interview.

Then, some turns of the pages later, under her senior bio, there is another inspiring quote: "This is my music, this is my self … Free at last!”

Mazzoli’s quotes would be her destiny: The composer is a twice Grammy-nominated professor of composition at Bard College Conservatory of Music in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. She was a former composter-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Opera Philadelphia. She, and countless others, has heard her pieces performed by the Los Angeles Opera, Opera Philadelphia, the New York Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, according to the North Penn Alumni Association. If you watched Amazon’s "Mozart in the Jungle,” then you have heard Mazzoli’s music.

Mazzoli studied at Boston University, Yale University, and studied at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in

The Hague on her path of music and composition.

Recently, she performed on NPR’s "Tiny Desk Concert,” alongside Jennifer Koh. The concert is a video series featuring performances of renowned artists literally in the NPR office. Mazzoli and Koh have now joined the likes of Taylor Swift, Usher, Yo-Yo Ma, Patti LaBelle, 311, and Wu-Tang Clan.

NPR itself called her "the 21^st century’s gatecrasher of new classical music,” according to Yale University. Her first Grammy nomination was for her composition "Vespers for Violin,” recorded by Olivia De Prato, and her second nomination was for her concerto "Dark with Excessive Bright.”

However, closest to Mazzoli’s heart is, according to Yale School of Music, is her and composer Ellen Reid’s answer to gender imbalance in music composition.

Thus, they created Luna Composition Lab in 2016, according to the report, which mentors, educates, and offers resources for teenage non-binary, female, and gender-nonconforming composers.

According to Mazzoli, it is the only initiative of its kind in the United States.

"We were disturbed by the fact that female and non-binary composers continue to make up such a small percentage of those artists programmed and celebrated by orchestras, educationalinstitutions, and opera companies. In 2016, works by women accounted for 5 percent of works on orchestral programs in America, and non-binary composers made up less than 0.1 percent,” Mazzoli said in the Yale interview. "Now, that combined percentage is up to 15 percent, which is still nowhere near representative of the U.S. population, which is 51 percent female and 1.5 percent non-binary.”

Now, the Lab "connects female, non-binary, and gender nonconforming composers in their teens with prominent female, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming mentors,” per the article.

Instiutional educations, she said, need to hire more female and non-binary composers.

"I have learned that advocacy and mentoring are as essential to my creative practice as composing every day. I could not continue to be a composer in this field if I weren’t helping the next generation to have a slightly easier time,” she said in the report.