Jake Heggie

composer

Jake Heggie is best known for Dead Man Walking, the most widely performed new opera of the last 25 years. With a libretto by Terrence McNally, it has been mounted by major theaters in more than eighty international productions. His critically acclaimed operas Moby-Dick, Three Decembers, and It’s a Wonderful Life, with libretti by Gene Scheer, have also established themselves in the classical canon. Heggie’s ten full-length operas, numerous one-acts, and more than three hundred art songs have been performed on five continents.

Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer,” Heggie actively seeks out projects that invite a wide range of perspectives. Recent examples include Intelligence, based on the true story of women who infiltrated the Confederate White House, and Songs for Murdered Sisters, his collaboration with Margaret Atwood, created in response to the global epidemic of gender-based violence and nominated for Classical Album of the Year at the Juno Awards.

Mr. Heggie has longstanding creative partnerships with mezzos Frederica von Stade, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, and Jamie Barton, whose Heggie project Unexpected Shadows earned a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Marking a new chapter of legacy building, he recently joined the composition faculty of San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Heggie continues to write all his work by hand, believing that a visceral, physical connection to the score is an essential part of composition. For more information, visit jakeheggie.com.