Biography

      

Jennifer Griffith creates vocal and instrumental works that are inspired by social issues, politics and human relationships. As a small child she listened to a steady diet of early jazz and blues when her pianist mother performed in Dixieland jazz and dance bands. In her teens and early twenties Jennifer performed as a pianist and jazz singer (she and her saxophonist brother were into bebop and beyond), but in the next ten years pursued studies in Western European music and graduated with a B.A. in piano performance. At Smith College she earned the masters degree in composition and moved to NYC to earn her doctorate. Her pocket opera Dream President was presented in New York City Opera’s VOX 2004, again at the National Opera/Opera Index/Manhattan School of Music’s Opera Theater presentations in 2005, and in a collaborative production Opera After Hours, directed by Christopher Alden, at the Zipper Factory in 2008.

Griffith has received awards from the MacDowell Colony and the American Music Center, and her chamber works have been performed by American Opera Projects, the new music ensembles Cygnus, Glass Farm, Newspeak, and Vox Novus's electroacoustic 60x60 Dance concerts.

Currently Griffith is collaborating with playwright Dominic Orlando on a new one-act opera Beautiful Creatures, an anxious frolic through politics and people in the environmental movement. The opera will premiere in June, 2011 in New York. She recently earned the doctorate in composition at the CUNY Graduate Center.  Her dissertation examines the music of composer/bandleader/bassist Charles Mingus that explores his nods toward early and New Orleans jazz. She sings jazz at NYC venues and is featured vocalist on saxophonist Steve Elson’s new cd, Mott and Broome. Griffith’s electroacoustic work for The Tempest Project (“Who is Miranda?”) is forthcoming on Pogus records. Her bestiary “A Little Beastliness for Guitar” for guitarist Oren Fader is available on his cd First Flight. In collaboration with writer/artist/filmmaker Zahra Partovi, she recently completed a chamber oratorio setting of the Persian poet J. M. Rumi's The Reed, a commission for the Grace and Spiritus Chorale of Brooklyn.