Ted Hearne (born 1982) is an American composer, singer and conductor. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Biography
Ted Hearne was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, where he was a member of the Chicago Children's Choir and graduate of Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. He moved to New York in 2000 and has attended the Manhattan School of Music and Yale School of Music. Hearne's oratorio “Katrina Ballads”, an hour-long work about the media’s response to Hurricane Katrina received widespread acclaim after it was premiered at Charleston's Spoleto Festival in 2007. His oratorio The Source, about Chelsea Manning, sets text from leaked military documents and was premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His third oratorio Place, written in collaboration with Saul Williams and the director Patricia McGregor, was premiered digitally in 2020 as Place: Quarantine Edition. The album version of Place was also released in 2020 and was nominated for 2 GRAMMY awards.
Hearne has been commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, A Far Cry, pianist Timo Andres, singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane and other musicians. Hearne has become known for writing in a wide range of contemporary-music styles, and has collaborated with a diverse group of musicians, most notably Erykah Badu, with whom he created an evening-length piece for Badu to perform with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, J.G. Thirlwell, with whom he created chamber-music arrangements of Thirlwell's electronic project Manorexia, and electronic/noise musician Philip White, whom with he performs as R We Who R We. Hearne has also worked with jazz musician Rene Marie, poet Dorothea Lasky, the JACK Quartet, harpist/composer Zeena Parkins and conductor Alan Pierson, and his music has been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), (Le) Poisson Rouge, Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, and Carnegie Hall.
Hearne is the recipient of the 2009 Gaudeamus Prize in Music Composition, and the 2014 New Voices Residency from publisher Boosey and Hawkes and the San Francisco Symphony. In 2018 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in music. He is currently on the Composition faculty at the USC Thornton School of Music.
Concert works
Hearne's music is known for juxtaposing diverse styles, and for its often overtly political content. The New York Times has noted Hearne for his “topical, politically sharp-edged works,” and has called his compositional style “nuanced, elliptical and elusive.”
Oratorio
2008 “Katrina Ballads” for mixed chamber ensemble and five singers
2014 “The Source” for mixed chamber ensemble and four singers
2020 "Place" for mixed chamber ensemble and six singers
Large Ensemble
2008 “Patriot” for orchestra
2010 “Is It Dirty” for two singers and chamber orchestra
2010 “Build a Room” for trumpet and orchestra
2011 “Partition” for chorus and orchestra
2011 “Word for Word” for orchestra
2012 “Law of Mosaics” for string orchestra
2013 "Stem” for orchestra
2013 “You’re Causing Quite A Disturbance” for orchestra and singer (with Erykah Badu) 2015 "Respirator" for chamber orchestra 2015 "Dispatches" for orchestra 2017 "Miami in Movements" for orchestra with video 2018 "Brass Tacks" for symphonic orchestra 2019 "In Thrall" for wind ensemble