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 Elektra on London's West End, starring Brie Larson, 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

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Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Selected Repertoire

Ted Hearne / Chamber Music (2-5 Instruments)

We Are Working Tirelessly For a Ceasefire (2025, 7-8 min.)   •   Freefucked (2022)   •   Exposure (2017, 18 min.)   •   The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask (2016, 11 min.)   •   Furtive Movements (2013, 14 min.)   •   Interlude for Fingers (2013, 4 min.)   •   Candy (2011, 8 min.)   •   Thaw (2009, 12 min.)   •   Ghostspace (2009, 8 min.)   •   Vessels (2008, 10 min.)   •   Crib Dweller (2007, 8 min.)   •   23 (2005, 8 min.)   •   Warning Song (2006, 7 min.)   •   One of Us, One of Them (2005, 8 min.)   •   Forcefield (2004, 5 min.)

Ted Hearne / Choral Music

Elektra Choruses (2025)   •   In The Language of Truth (2022, 10 min.)   •   Texting With Your Dad in the Anthropocene (2019, 12 min.)   •   Animals (2018, 9 min.)   •   Fervor (2018, 3 min.)   •   What it might say (2016, 5 min.)   •   Coloring Book (2015, 30 min.)   •   Consent (2014, 7 min.)   •   Ripple (2012, 10 min.)   •   Privilege (2009, 14 min.)   •   Mass for St. Mary’s (2008, 10 min.)

Ted Hearne / Collaborative & Theatrical Works

Elektra (w/ Daniel Fish) (2025)   •   Ligeia Mare (w/ Damon Davis) (2024-2025)   •   Or Forevermore (w/ Pam Tanowitz) (2024)   •   Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music [orchestral version] (2022)   •   Miami in Movements (2017)   •   The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask (2016)   •   Hand Eye (2015)   •   You're Causing Quite a Disturbance (2013)   •   R WE WHO R WE (2011-2017)   •   Histories (2012)

Ted Hearne / Large Works with Voices

Farming (2023/2025, 60 min.)   •   over and over vorbei nicht vorbei (2024, 60 min.)   •   Place (2018/2020, 80 min.)   •   In Your Mouth/Farming (2023/2025, 60 min.)   •   In Your Mouth/Dorothea (2019)   •   Sound from the Bench (2014/2017, 40 min.)   •   Coloring Book (2015, 30 min.)   •   The Source (2014, 65 min.)   •   Partition (2010, 20 min.)   •   Katrina Ballads (2007, 60 min.)

Ted Hearne / Medium to Large Ensemble

To Be Whole Is To Be Part (2021, 7 min.)   •   Authority (2019, 30 min.)Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures [Speed is Pure] (2019, 40 min.)   •   One Like (2016, 7 min.)   •   For the Love of Charles Mingus (2016, 9 min.)   •   Baby [an argument] (2016, 11 min.)   •   By-By Huey (2014, 10 min.)   •   "The Cage" Variations (2014, 20 min.)   •   Crispy Gentlemen (2012, 15 min.)   •   But I Voted for Shirley Chisholm (2012, 8 min.)   •   Randos (2012, 8 min.)   •   Cutest Little Arbitrage (2011, 12 min.)   •   Is it Dirty (2010, 8 min.)   •   Eyelid Margin (2009, 12 min.)   •   Snowball (2008, 6 min.)   •   Illuminating the Maze (2008/2016, 15 min.)   •   Music from "Body Soldiers" (2008, 10 min.)   •   Cordavi and Fig (2007, 8 min.)   •   Antiphon (2003, 8 min.)

Ted Hearne / Music for Youth Choir

The Definition of Crisis (2020, 2-5 min.)   •   Room for Something (2011, 8 min.)   •   Away (2010, 6 min.)   •   Because (2006, 6 min.)   •   Murder on the Road in Alabama (2003, 6 min.)

Ted Hearne / Orchestral

Or Forevermore (2024, 30 min.)   •   In Thrall (2019, 15 min.)   •   Brass Tacks (2018, 6 min.)   •   Miami in Movements (2017, 35 min.)   •   Dispatches (2015, 18 min.)   •   Respirator (2015, 13 min.)   •   Stem (2013, 25 min.)   •   Law of Mosaics (2012, 30 min.)   •   Erasure Scherzo (2012, 6 min.)   •   Word for Word (2011, 10 min.)   •   Shizz (2010/2017, 4 min.)   •   Build a Room (2010, 20 min.)   •   concerto for trumpet and orchestra

Ted Hearne / Solo Works (Various)

Lobby Music (2021, 7 min.)   •   Inheritance (2021, 5 min.)   •   Study Buddy (2021, 3 min.)   •   The Luminous Road (2020, 2 min.)   •   Distance Canon (2020, 4 min.)   •   Another National Anthem (2019, 5 min.)   •   DaVZ23BzMH0 (2016, 7 min.)   •   Tänze (with a sense of urgency) (2014, 3 min.)   •   Parlor Diplomacy (2011, 20 min.)   •   Nobody's (2010, 4 min.)

Ted Hearne / Song and Solo Works

Antihero Hero (2024, 8 min.)   •   Freefucked (2022, 17 min.)   •   Complainers (2021)   •   Translation: Two Cigar Butts (2021, 5 min.)   •   In Your Mouth/Dorothea (2019, 65 min.)   •   Everyone Keeps Me (2018)   •   Why Go In Cars (2018)   •   I Am Sick of Feeling (2018)   •   You Are Not Dead (2018)   •   Protection (2009 rev. 2017, 5-6 min.)   •   Intimacy and Resistance (2010, 5 min.)   •   Charleston Songbook (2008, 20 min.)   •   I Remember (2007, 8 min.)   •   I Carry Your Heart (2007, 5 min.)   •   Warning Song (2006, 7 min.)

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/activist Saul Williams.

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/activist Saul Williams.

    Learn about this project

  • Projects

    Unsettlement Band

    Many of Ted Hearne's large projects feature the Unsettlement Band, a group of exceptional improvisors, electronic musicians, and vocalists 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?”.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • FARMING

    Bucks County, Pennsylvania
    Jul 2023

    • 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.

  • Everybody 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Discography