ABOUT

Zosha Di Castri, a Canadian “composer of riotously inventive works” (The New Yorker), currently lives in New York. Her music has been performed across Canada, the United States, South America, Asia, and Europe and extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance that encourage audiences to feel “compelled to return for repeated doses” (The Arts Desk). She is currently the Francis Goelet Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University. 

Highlights this season include Zosha’s new large chamber work commissioned by the LA Phil and conducted by John Adams, premiering April 2024; a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress for percussionist Steve Schick and ensemble premiering November 2024, and upcoming collaborations with the Bozzini Quartet and Ensemble Paramirabo/Totem. Zosha recently curated an event showcasing her work as part of the New York Philharmonic’s Nightcap series.

In the Half-Light (2022), Zosha's song cycle for soprano Barbara Hannigan with libretto by Tash Aw, was premiered by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and performed again in February 2024 by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. Other recent projects include We live the opposite daring for six voices written for Ekmeles; time>>T. - - I. - - M.(time) - - E for large chamber ensemble premiered by the Grossman Ensemble in Chicago; Hypha, a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano/keyboard commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and Pentimento, a short orchestra piece commissioned for the WDR Sinfonieorchester's 75th anniversary.

Zosha’s Long Is the Journey, Short Is the Memory for orchestra and chorus opened the first night of the 2019 BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Karina Canellakis with the BBC Symphony and BBC Singers. Other large-scale projects include Dear Life, a 25-minute piece for soprano, recorded narrator and orchestra, based on a short-story by Alice Munro, and an evening-length new music theater piece, Phonobellow, co-written with David Adamcyk for the International Contemporary Ensemble with performances in New York and Montreal. Phonobellow features five musicians, a large kinetic sound sculpture, electronics, and video in a reflection on the influence of photography and phonography on human perception. 

Zosha’s orchestral compositions have been commissioned by John Adams, the Toronto Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Esprit Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and the BBC, and have been featured by the the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among others. She has made appearances with the Chicago Symphony, the LA Phil, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and has worked with many leading new music groups, including Talea Ensemble, Ekmeles, Yarn/Wire, the NEM, Ensemble Cairn, and JACK and Parker Quartets. 

Other recent projects include a commission titled Hunger for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal with improvised drummer, designed to accompany Peter Foldes’ 1973 eponymous silent film; a string quartet for the Banff International String Quartet Competition; a piece for Yarn/Wire for two pianists, two percussionists, and electronics premiered at Zosha’s Miller Theatre Composer Portrait concert; a solo piano work for Julia Den Boer commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Fund; and a string octet premiered by JACK Quartet and Parker Quartet at the Banff Centre. She was the recipient of the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for her work Cortège in 2012, and participated in Ircam’s Manifeste Festival in Paris, writing an interactive electronic work for Thomas Hauert’s dance company, ZOO. 

Zosha’s 2019 debut album Tachitipo was released on New Focus Recordings to critical acclaim. The title track was nominated for The JUNO Awards’ 2021 Classical Composition of the Year. Tachitipo was named in Best of 2019 lists by The New Yorker, I Care if You Listen, AnEarful, Sequenza21, and New York Music Daily, and praised as “a formidable statement. It is so comprehensively realized, institutionally ratified, and sensitive to the creative exigencies of the 21st century that one wants to send a copy of it to the publishers of textbooks for music history survey courses in the hope that it will be included in a last chapter or two.” (I Care if You Listen)

Zosha is a recipient of the 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship, the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, and was an inaugural fellow at the 2018-19 Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. She completed her Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance and Composition at McGill University, and her DMA in Composition at Columbia University.

Last updated November 2024

CV

Click here for a downloadable CV. 
last updated 2.01.24

BIOS FOR PROGRAMS

Click here for a downloadable PDF with the most recent versions of Zosha's biographies.

last updated November 2024