Daron Hagen is an auteur whose multi-modal practice combines words, music, and cinema into seminal Operafilms. For the Bardo Trilogy, he served simultaneously as composer, librettist, director, and editor, executing a unified creative vision spanning a catalog of 3 operafilms, 14 operas, 6 symphonies, 14 concertos, a raft of chamber and choral works, and over 500 art songs—all interlocking with a literary output that includes the memoir Duet With the Past, the treatise Exploring Operafilm, and the forthcoming novel The Rosebud Row.

His independent trajectory was shaped by early associations with mentors and collaborators like Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Lukas Foss, David Diamond, and Gore Vidal. Following studies at the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, he has received commissions from The Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Opera, the College Band Directors National Association, and The King's Singers. He has created anniversary works for the New York Philharmonic's 150th, the Buffalo Philharmonic's 90th, ASCAP's 75th, and The Cecilia Chorus of New York for the 75th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This output thrives on close creative partnerships with virtuosos and literary collaborators including Gerard Schwarz, JoAnn Falletta, Paul Muldoon, Stephen Wadsworth, J.D. McClatchy, Gary Graffman, and Kate Lindsey.

A Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo and founding artistic director of the New Mercury Collective, Hagen is a Guggenheim Fellow whose honors include two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Kennedy Center Friedheim, ASCAP-Nissim, and Columbia University Bearns Prizes. His work is sustained by international residencies from the Rockefeller, Camargo, and Bogliasco foundations. Hagen lives and works in Upstate New York.

[268 words; Sept. 2026]