Joanne Metcalf

Joanne Metcalf is an American composer of contemporary classical music. Best known for her choral music, she has worked closely with the Hilliard Ensemble and Singer Pur, among other vocal ensembles.

Life and career

Joanne Metcalf was born in 1958 and studied music composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was awarded first prize for the 1993 Search for New Music award from the International Alliance for Women in Music. While studying at Duke University with Stephen Jaffe and Scott Lindroth, she met Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, then a guest at Duke. Inspired by "whatever it was that made music so fresh and energizing", Metcalf later studied with him for at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague through a Fulbright scholarship. She continued her studies at Duke, before teaching composition at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin from to 2001 to 2025.

Music

Her Il nome del bel fior, based on the vision of Mary in Canto XXIII of Dante‘s Paradiso, was composed for, and recorded by, the Hilliard Ensemble and Singer Pur.