Hailed as an “...eloquent, poetic voice in contemporary music...” (American Record Guide), Melinda Wagner achieved widespread attention when her colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1999. Since then, major compositions have included Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic, and a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for Emanuel Ax, who has also performed it with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Kansas City Symphony. In all, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has commissioned three works by Wagner: Falling Angels, Extremity of Sky, and a new work, Proceed, Moon, which received its premiere under the baton of Susanna Mälkki in 2017. Other recent commissions include Elegy Flywheel, composed for the New York Philharmonic’s Project 19 program, and Dido Reimagined, for Dawn Upshaw and the Brentano String Quartet.

Wagner’s works have been performed by many other leading ensembles, such as the American Brass Quintet, the American Composers Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The Philadelphia Orchestra will perform her Little Moonhead in the coming year.

Among honors Wagner has received is a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and ASCAP. In 2001, Wagner received an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College, and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Project support has come from the Barlow Endowment, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.

A passionate and inspiring teacher, Melinda Wagner is currently Chair of the Department of Composition at the Juilliard School. She has presented master classes at many institutions including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Juilliard, and Eastman. She recently served as Master Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami. Ms. Wagner has been a mentor composer at the Wellesley Composers Conference (2010, 2012, 2013) and the American Composers Orchestra Underwood Readings and Earshot programs. Other residencies include the Yellow Barn, Monadnock, and Vail Valley Music Festivals, the MacDowell Colony, and in 2019, the Atlantic Music Festival.

“Imagine Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiaen teaming up to write a concerto, add a certain lithe sense of mystery that is Wagner’s own and you’ll have some idea of ‘Extremity of Sky.’” When Tim Page wrote those words in the Washington Post about Wagner’s Piano Concerto, he also referred to its “prismatic color and romantic fantasy.” Time and time again, commentators on Wagner’s music use a similarly rich, highly descriptive, emotive vocabulary.

In the composer’s own words: “Music offers composers an immeasurably rich and generous sonic landscape in which to explore the ‘life story’ of each musical idea — its dramas, intrigues, joys and sorrows — a life. I strive to find various and persuasive ways of moving through the resulting temporal narrative, and to traverse a wide spectrum of expression and color on the way. Ultimately, I want listeners to know me; I want them to hear that while I enjoy the cerebral exercise, I am led principally by my ear, and by my heart.”

Ms. Wagner lives in New Jersey with her husband, percussionist James Saporito, and their children.