40-year-old American composer and pianist Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans will be Opera Philadelphia’s next Composer in Residence from the fall of 2022. It is said that her music is in conversation with musical genres from jazz and experimental music to gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Bryan is professor of music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University, and a Creative Partner with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bryan has Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory, a Master of Music from Rutgers University, a Doctoral of Musical Arts from Columbia University, and completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2018 Hermitage Fellow, a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition, and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow.
Bryan’s first work with Opera Philadelphia was Blessed, one of the original four digital commissions produced for the Opera Philadelphia Channel in early 2021.
