Daron Hagen was born in Milwaukee in 1961 and has been a New Yorker since 1984. He taught himself to read music at the age of 11, began piano lessons at the age of 12, completed his first symphony at 14, conducted his first orchestral première at 16, and at 19 became the youngest composer since Samuel Barber to have a work premièred by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
A full-time composer of opera and concert music, he is one of America’s most versatile, prolific, and respected opera composers. Mr. Hagen has collaborated with distinguished musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Slatkin and many others.
His work has been widely commissioned and performed by most of North America’s major musical institutions, and numerous institutions abroad, including the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Seattle Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Curtis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Swan (UK), Seattle Opera, Opera Theater of Ireland, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), and the Royal Albert Hall.
Among other honors, he has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize, two Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowships, and the Seattle Opera Chairman’s Award. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Curtis Institute of Music and of the Juilliard School, he has taught at Bard College, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Princeton Atelier, and fulfilled numerous composer-in-residencies around the U.S.
He is a Lifetime Member of the Corporation of Yaddo, former president of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation, and a Trustee of the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera. He wrote over 200 art songs, song cycles, and choral works, eight operas, four symphonies, twelve concerti, and over forty chamber works.
You can go to his website here.