TedHearne

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  • Composer

About Ted

Praised for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit," and "topical, politically sharp-edged works" (The New York Times), composer, singer and bandleader Ted Hearne creates music inspired by the overlay of different viewpoints and their sonic possibilities. His are personal and multi-dimensional works that often explore unconventional interactions of text and music, and are rooted in a sense of inquiry. Pitchfork called Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory -- from any genre," and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne's music "holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact."

Recent major works include the upcoming recording of his acclaimed project Farming with The Crossing, which will be released on Deathbomb Arc this Autumn; Over and over vorbei nicht vorbei for Komische Oper Berlin; and Daniel Fish's Elektra on London's West End, starring Brie Larson in a translation by Anne Carson, for which he wrote the music.

Hearne's Sound From the Bench, a cantata for choir, electric guitars and drums setting texts from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments and inspired by the idea of corporate personhood, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Place, Hearne’s work written with poet Saul Williams and director Patricia McGregor, was nominated for two GRAMMY Awards and was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize.

Ted Hearne was awarded the 2014 New Voices Residency from Boosey and Hawkes, and is a member of the composition faculty at the University of Southern California. Ted's many collaborators include Erykah Badu, Pam Tanowitz, Taylor Mac, Damon Davis, and Daniel Fish; his works have been conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams and Gustavo Dudamel. Recent commissions include orchestral works for the San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Ballet and Opera, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and A Far Cry, chamber works for Eighth Blackbird and Ensemble dal Niente, and vocal works for Conspirare, The Crossing and Roomful of Teeth.

Ted is currently working on a new operatic adaption of Ursula K. Le Guin's seminal novel The Dispossessed in collaboration with librettist Chana Porter, director Kaneza Schaal, and the ensemble WildUp. The opera will premiere in 2027.

Ted is based in Los Angeles

Contact

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Photos

Compositions

Or Forevermore

2024, 30 min. Large orchestra

In Thrall

2019, 15 min. Wind ensemble with 2 solo percussionists

Brass Tacks

2018, 6 min. Large orchestra

Miami in Movements

2017, 35 min. Large orchestra with video

Dispatches

2015, 18 min. large orchestra

Respirator

2015, 13 min. Chamber orchestra

Stem

2013, 25 min. Large orchestra

Law of Mosaics

2012, 30 min. String orchestra

Erasure Scherzo

2012, 6 min. Large orchestra

Word for Word

2011, 10 min. Large orchestra

Shizz

2010/2017, 4 min. Versions for large orchestra and chamber orchestra

Build a Room

2010, 20 min. Concerto for trumpet and orchestra

Patriot

2007, 9 min. Large orchestra

Projects

Place

Pulitzer prize finalist, composer, singer, and conductor Ted Hearne, who is "not afraid to bring politics and social justice issues into his music," (WFMT) grapples with the generational conversation of gentrification in Place, an "explosive, restless, fragment-laden score," (New York Times) written in collaboration with poet Saul Williams and director Patricia McGregor.

Learn about this project

  • Projects

    Place

    Pulitzer prize finalist, composer, singer, and conductor Ted Hearne, who is "not afraid to bring politics and social justice issues into his music," (WFMT) grapples with the generational conversation of gentrification in Place, an "explosive, restless, fragment-laden score," (New York Times) written in collaboration with poet Saul Williams and director Patricia McGregor.

    Learn about this project

  • Projects

    Dorothea

    Many of Ted Hearne's large projects feature an ensemble from Dorothea, a fluid group of instrumentalists, vocalists, electronic musicians and improvisers, that tour with him. 

    Learn about this project

News

Press

  • Elektra

    Duke of York's Theatre, London
    Feb 2025

    • The chorus move their microphone stands into sharp diagonals as they sing Ted Hearne’s haunting, powerful score.

    • ...the chorus sing their response in beautiful harmonies set to composer Ted Hearne’s score.

    • The chorus sing at her in gorgeous harmonies to just let it all go, asking “Why are you so in love with things unbearable?”.

  • Encounters

    Royal Ballet and Opera
    Oct 2024

    • The sensation of the night was Or Forevermore by the American Pam Tanowitz, which brought a cheeky wit and virtuosic cleverness to steps that matched the blasting brass and sudden shocks of Ted Hearne’s bracing score.

  • Law of Mosaics

    New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center
    Apr 2024

    • Law of Mosaics” is a great title, and one that would befit almost any dance by the deconstructivist choreographer Pam Tanowitz. It just so happens that it belongs to the third ballet she has made for the New York City Ballet, and it stems from its Ted Hearne score. “Mosaics” premiered in 2022, but excitingly, Hearne was back to conduct his piece for the entire Spring Season run of the ballet. In Hearne, Tanowitz has found an ideological soulmate: they play similar syntactical games. Tanowitz breaks down conventional ballet steps and mismatches their components; Hearne rearranges and distorts clips from famous classical pieces. In “Law of Mosaics” their efforts align in spellbinding ways.

  • FARMING

    Bucks County, Pennsylvania
    Jul 2023

    • ...Hearne takes these found-text nuggets and gives them music that moves from lushly meditative to frenetic and obsessively repetitive — a visceral translation into sound of the information overload that is contemporary life.

    • In a word, wild. The Crossing is known for working in a contemporary style, but Ted Hearne turned that dial way up. This music is twitchy, allusive, often synthetic and surrealistic. It delivers what I can only describe as a full sensory overload.

  • Everyone Keeps Me

    Royal Ballet and Opera
    Feb 2023

    • ...this fragmented pas de deux to the recorded Dispatches orchestral composition of Ted Hearne was a delightful bonne bouche of neoclassical and romantic partnering.

    • A score by Ted Hearne matches the boundlessness of their youthful ardor.

  • Place (album review)

    New Amsterdam
    Mar 2020

    • From here, following his usual procedures, Hearne cobbles together a collision of free-jazz, pop, soul, gospel, electronica, contemporary classical chamber music, straight and electronically altered vocals, sometimes hitting up against each other in rapid sequence or leaving long, sparse patches that drag. In some passages, I am reminded of Frank Zappa’s collages when I hear this, juxtaposing casual vernacular spoken words amid several musical styles busily clashing.

  • Place

    Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
    Oct 2018

    • ...it was impossible to ignore the presence of the real Mr. Hearne at his command post conducting the musicians, manipulating the sound and driving the pace of a social auto-da-fé of his own orchestration. His score is stylistically diverse, with a sophisticated weirdness to the color palette.

  • Sound From The Bench (album review)

    Cantaloupe
    Aug 2017

    • Hearne’s music, like that of most of his contemporaries, leaves the complexity of counterpoint, in which Stravinsky revelled, behind, but the chanting simultaneities of Hearne’s writing are enriched by clashes of style and texture... From the timeless echoes of injustice, Hearne has forged a fierce and timely grace.

  • The Source

    REDCAT, LA Opera, Los Angeles
    Dec 2016

    • Hearne’s piece holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact.... “The Source,” based on a libretto by Mark Doten, is a mesmerizing and disquieting collage of vocal, instrumental, and recorded sounds.

  • The Source (album review)

    New Amsterdam
    Nov 2015

    • Did you know that one of Erykah Badu's collaborators made what could very rightly be called an opera about Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks? Well, he did. Composer Ted Hearne's productions have tackled George W. Bush and Katrina and now the tale of Manning and what led to her 25-year prison sentence. A complex, beautiful piece of theater, Hearne has pushed to make The Source succeed as a piece of music.

  • The Source

    Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York
    Oct 2014

    • “The Source” is his finest, most inventive and ambivalent work yet... Seven instrumentalists play a score with the propulsion of rock and the sensitivity of chamber music. Sung excerpts from the leaked war logs take on the unnervingly lulling rhythms of the Evangelist’s recitatives in Bach’s Passions, while passages from Ms. Manning’s Internet chats elicit warmer, more human vocalism.

Discography