About Christopher Cerrone

Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984, New York) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. His GRAMMY-winning music balances lushness and austerity, immersive textures and telling detail, dramatic impact and interiority.

Text and the human voice sit at the center of Cerrone's output. His opera In a Grove, with a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, opened in March 2022 in a co-production by Pittsburgh Opera and LA Opera and made its New York debut at the PROTOTYPE Festival in 2025, where it was named to The New York Times's Best Classical Performances of the year for "Cerrone's coolly caressing music, with its eerie haze of electronic and acoustic textures." His first opera, Invisible Cities, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist, received its fully staged premiere in a production by The Industry in Los Angeles's Union Station, playing to sold-out audiences over twenty-two performances. Beaufort Scales, an oratorio for voices, electronics, and video commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble, premiered at Mass MoCA, toured nationally, and had its international premiere at the Big Sing festival in Haarlem. Recent collaborations include The Crossing, Roomful of Teeth, and Stile Antico.

Cerrone writes extensively for orchestra and large ensemble. His commissions include The Insects Became Magnetic, an orchestral work with electronics for the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Breaks and Breaks, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony; A Body, Moving, a brass concerto for the Cincinnati Symphony; The Year of Silence for the Louisville Orchestra and baritone Dashon Burton; The Air Suspended, a piano concerto for Shai Wosner; and Selah, a double concerto for violinist Anthony Marwood and cellist Coleman Itzkoff, premiered by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and co-commissioned with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. His orchestral music has been performed internationally by ensembles including the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the Hallé, and the Regensburg Philharmonic.

Recorded music is essential to Cerrone's work, less a document of the concert hall than a creative act in its own right. His album Don't Look Down (PENTATONE Records), featuring Sandbox Percussion, pianist Conor Hanick, and mezzo-soprano Elspeth Davis, won the GRAMMY for Best Engineered Album, Classical; The Washington Post called Cerrone "a composer with poetry and wit to spare." Across his catalog, his recordings have earned six GRAMMY nominations, including three for Don't Look Down and one each for The Arching Path (In a Circle Records), The Pieces that Fall to Earth (New Amsterdam Records), and Beaufort Scales (Cold Blue Music).

A recipient of the 2015–2016 Samuel Barber Rome Prize and a resident at the Laurenz Haus Foundation in Basel from 2022 to 2023, Cerrone holds degrees from the Yale School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, and joined the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music at The New School in 2021. He lives in Jersey City with his wife and their young son.

His music is published exclusively by Schott Helicon Music Corporation, New York.

Composer portrait by Jacob Blickenstaff.