“A composer born to write operas” (Chicago Tribune) possessed of an “infinitely fertile imagination” (Fanfare Magazine) whose music is “dazzling, unsettling, exuberant, and heroic” (The New Yorker), Hagen is a creative polymath, active internationally also as a stage and film director, librettist, conductor, collaborative pianist, essayist, and the author of the “ruthlessly honest and beautifully written” memoir, Duet With the Past.
His works include 14 staged operas, 6 symphonies, 14 concertos, over 50 chamber and choral works, over 500 widely performed art songs, and two internationally laureled “operafilms” for which he has served as auteur composer/screenwriter/director/film editor. His Everyone, Everywhere a large-scale cantata premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2023, was commissioned to honor the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the New York Philharmonic tapped him for its 150th, Yaddo for its 100th, ASCAP for its 75th, and the Curtis Institute of Music for its 75th. He has been commissioned by the Seattle Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and written concertos and roles for Gary Graffman, Nathan Gunn, Jeffrey Khaner, Jaime Laredo, Kate Lindsey, and Sharon Robinson, among others.
He has conducted the premiere recordings of his operas, released two discs of his songs as a collaborative pianist, and stage directed his operas. A respected and prolific educator, he has taught at the Curtis Institute, Bard College, the City College of New York, the Chicago College of Performing Arts, and the Princeton Atelier, among others. Hagen has served as grants adjudicator; score competition and commissioning panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Opera America, Copland House, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Meet the Composer, private Foundations, festivals, and chaired panels and adjudication bodies as a Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo, president of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, as a Trustee of the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera, and as a member of the boards of Joy in Singing and Composers Recordings Incorporated. Past Artistic Director of the Seasons Music Festival, he is Co-Chair of Composition at the Wintergreen Music Festival and Founding Artistic Director of the New Mercury Collective. He is also a member of the Distinguished Mentors Council of Composers Now and the Board of Advisors for Lyric Fest,
A Guggenheim Fellow, Hagen is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize, two Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residencies, the Barlow Endowment, Bearns, and ASCAP-Nissim Prizes and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He attended Curtis and Juilliard. Widely recorded, his music is published by Peermusic Classical, and he is represented by Encompass Arts. He lives in Rhinebeck, NY with his wife Gilda Lyons and their sons.
— January 2024
“A composer born to write operas” (Chicago Tribune) possessed of an “infinitely fertile imagination” (Fanfare Magazine) whose music is “dazzling, unsettling, exuberant, and heroic” (The New Yorker), “Hagen’s music represents a considerable artistic achievement of uncompromising seriousness” (Times Literary Supplement). Opera News describes his Amelia as “one of the 20 best operas of the 21st century;” NATS Journal of Singing calls him “the finest American composer of vocal music in his generation.” His “theatrical audacity,” and “gift for big, sweeping tunes” (New York Times) underpin work that “is both highly original and gripping; restless, questioning music that never loses its heart.” (Wall Street Journal). “To say that he is a remarkable musician is to underrate him. Daron is music,” wrote Ned Rorem in Opera News. His “ruthlessly honest and beautifully written” memoir, Duet With the Past (McFarland, April 2019) “takes him from his haunted childhood to the upper echelons of musical life in New York and Europe” (Tim Page).
p/c: Karen Pearson