Scott Ordway

BIOGRAPHY

Composer and multimedia artist SCOTT ORDWAY (b. 1984, California) has become recognized for his boundary-defying, mixed-media projects, creating widely-acclaimed work that has been called “exquisite” (The New York Times) and “arresting” (Gramophone), “hypnotic” (BBC) and “a marvel” (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Heard on major stages around the world, his compositions revel in their multi-disciplinary reach, and reflect his vast creative curiosity. 

Drawing on his deep interest in literature, languages, and the humanities, Ordway’s remarkably diverse works often fuse his music with text (frequently his own), video, digital soundscape, photography, and experimental theater to explore an eclectic array of contemporary, often urgent themes about ecology, architecture, protest and revolution, and urban life. In recent years, he has focused on the relationship between landscape and culture through a series of large-scale projects such as The End of Rain, a multimedia symphony for Roomful of Teeth and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, featuring crowdsourced texts from hundreds of Californians impacted by wildfire and drought.

Hailed as “an American response to Sibelius” by The Boston Globe, his compositions have been commissioned or performed by the Hong Kong, Buffalo, and Colorado Springs Philharmonics; Tucson Symphony; Hong Kong Arts, Beijing Modern, Bang on a Can, and Aspen Music Festivals; Tanglewood New Fromm Players; Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler; Sweden’s Norrbotten NEO; Yale Institute of Sacred Music; The Thirteen; Lorelei and SOLI Chamber Ensembles; Jasper, Momenta, Daedalus, and Arneis String Quartets; University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology; Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities; and many other renowned ensembles and institutions. His music is also heard on the Acis and Naxos labels.

His work is supported by numerous awards, fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, NewMusicUSA, the American Composers Orchestra, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, American Music Center, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, American Composers Forum, Rutgers University, and American Opera Projects, where he was a Fellow. A recipient of the Tuttle Creative Residency Award from Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, he has also been invited for residencies at the Visby International Center for Composers (Sweden), Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY), Willapa Bay AiR (WA), and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences, where he was a Distinguished Fellow. He has served as Composer-in-Residence at the Newburyport and Carolina Chamber Music Festivals.

An active conductor, Ordway has held posts with the Syzygy New Music Ensemble (NYC) and Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (Oregon), and was Associate Conductor of the Juventas New Music Ensemble, an ensemble-in-residence at the Boston Conservatory. As a champion for the music of our time, he has presented more than 50 new works by young and emerging composers, in addition to many of his own large-scale works.

Ordway has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, University of Oregon, and University of Puget Sound, and has also trained at the Freie Universität Berlin and Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He is Associate Professor of Music Composition at Rutgers University, and previously taught at the Curtis Institute of Music and Bates College.