Performance Year: 2026
Gregory Spears is a New York-based composer whose music has been called “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times), “coolly entrancing” (The New Yorker), and “some of the most beautifully unsettling music to appear in recent memory” (The Boston Globe). He has been commissioned by The New York Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, Volti, BMI/Concert Artists Guild, Vocal Arts DC, New York Polyphony, The New York International Piano Competition, the JACK Quartet, and The New York Youth Symphony among others.
His latest opera, Sleepers Awake, will premiere at Opera Philadelphia next season. His opera The Righteous, written in collaboration with former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, was commissioned by Santa Fe Opera and premiered there in summer 2024. The opera was shortlisted for an International Opera Award in 2024 and was named a New York Times “Critic’s Pick.” Spears’ opera Castor and Patience, also written in collaboration with Smith and named a New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” was commissioned by Cincinnati Opera for their 100th Anniversary and premiered in 2022. For the 2021-2022 season, the New York Philharmonic commissioned and premiered Love Story, an orchestral song cycle for countertenor and orchestra.
Spears’ opera Fellow Travelers, written in collaboration with Greg Pierce, premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2016 and was subsequently produced at the Prototype Festival (NYC), The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Minnesota Opera, Madison Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Arizona Opera, Columbus Opera, the Des Moines Metro Opera, the Seagle Festival, The Cincinnati College-Conservatory, Florida Grand Opera, Virginia Opera, Opera Parallèle, and University College Opera (London). Next season, it will be produced at Pittsburgh Opera, Seattle Opera, and Portland Opera. It was hailed as “one of the most accomplished new operas I have, seen in recent years” (Chicago Tribune) and an opera that “seems assured of lasting appeal” (The New York Times).
Past commissions include a new vocal work, The Bitter Good, commissioned by New York Polyphony and The Tower and the Garden for a consortium of choirs including The Crossing. His 21-movement solo piano cycle Seven Days was released in the form of a custom designed app produced by the 92Y in fall 2021 and as an album in 2025. Spears also composed the soundtrack for the 2018 British feature film Macbeth featuring 18th-century instruments, and his Requiem was released by New Amsterdam records in 2011.
He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, MacDowell, the Aaron Copland House, and the Rauschenberg Residency at Captiva Island. He was a participant and later a composer mentor for The American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice program as well as a recent mentor composer for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. He holds degrees in composition from Eastman School of Music (BM), Yale School of Music (MM), and Princeton (PhD). He also studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen with Hans Abrahamsen. He currently teaches at New York University and Purchase College Conservatory (SUNY).
