short bio

Jennifer Griffith moves between creative efforts as composer, pianist, and jazz vocalist. She composes “a wonderful tapestry of musical passion and humor,” says Mark Greenfest of The New Music Connoisseur. Griffith collaborated with playwright/TV writer Dominic Orlando, acclaimed opera director Christopher Alden, and producers Stage|Time Collaborative on a one-act opera Beautiful Creatures, about the politics and people inside the environmental movement. Notable commissions include In E, for the 2008 Festival Non Sequitur, and “The Reed” (2010), a chamber oratorio, for the Grace and Spiritus Chorale of Brooklyn. Performances include her pocket opera Dream President (2008) and an excerpt from The X-Dresser in an evening of Opera After Hours, also directed by Mr. Alden. Griffith has written chamber works for Newspeak!, Glass Farm, and Cygnus ensembles. Dream President was also presented at New York City Opera’s Showcasing American Composers in 2004, and again in an expanded version at the Manhattan School of Music’s Opera Theater previews, in 2005. Griffith has been awarded the MacDowell Colony fellowship, and earned a doctorate degree in composition at the CUNY Graduate Center. She studied composition with Tomas Svoboda, Donald Wheelock, Thea Musgrave, David Del Tredici and Tania León. Jenn returned to singing jazz in NYC venues and was featured vocalist on reedman Steve Elson’s CD, Mott and Broome. Since 2019, she’s lived in Buenos Aires doing shows, including In Voice, a series of vocal interpretions of instrumental music by Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, and Thelonius Monk.

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