Daron Hagen is an auteur whose multi-modal practice treats stage, text, and moving image as a single, interlocking oeuvre. For the Bardo Trilogy, he served simultaneously as composer, librettist, director, and editor, establishing Operafilm as an autonomous genre where 14 operas, 6 symphonies, 14 concertos, and over 500 art songs interlock with a literary output that includes the memoir Duet With the Past, the treatise Exploring Operafilm, and the historical novel The Rosebud Row.

This trajectory was forged through early associations with Leonard Bernstein, Ned Rorem, Lukas Foss, David Diamond, and Gore Vidal. Following training at Curtis and Juilliard, his career has been highlit by commissions from The Philadelphia Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Opera, and the College Band Directors National Association. His practice encompasses 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, alongside creative partnerships with virtuosos and literary minds including Gerard Schwarz, JoAnn Falletta, Paul Muldoon, Stephen Wadsworth, 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 work has been sustained by two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize, and international residencies from the Rockefeller, Camargo, and Bogliasco foundations. He creates in Upstate New York.

[253 words; Sept. 2026]