p/c: Karen Pearson
Daron Hagen (b. 1961) is an American composer, writer, and filmmaker who pioneered operafilm, a unique hybrid of live music drama and cinema. His Bardo Trilogy — comprising Orson Rehearsed, 9/10: Love Before the Fall, and I Hear America Singing — exemplifies this seamless blend of music, story, and film, streaming worldwide and conceptualized in his upcoming book, Exploring Operafilm (May 2026).
Across five decades, Hagen has created an internationally performed body of original work that resists categorization, including 13 operas, 5 symphonies, 12 concerti, chamber and choral works, film scores, and over 250 art songs. His compositions have been commissioned by such institutions as the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Seattle Opera. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with notable figures including Leonard Bernstein, JoAnn Falletta, Lukas Foss, Kate Lindsey, Paul Muldoon, Gerard Schwarz, and Gore Vidal.
A Guggenheim Fellow and Lifetime Member of Yaddo, Hagen has received two Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residencies and fellowships from Bogliasco, Camargo, MacDowell, and VCCA. Accolades include awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize, and honors from Columbia University, ASCAP, and the Barlow Endowment.
Hagen, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Curtis, and Juilliard, has approached pedagogy as a form of artistic citizenship in posts and residencies at Bard College, Curtis, NYU, the University of Pittsburgh, Princeton Atelier, UNLV, and the Chicago College of Performing Arts. His memoir, Duet with the Past (2019), chronicles a career with recordings on Naxos and Sony, and published by Peermusic Classical. He is represented by Encompass Arts and lives in Upstate New York with Gilda Lyons and their sons.