Daron Hagen

Daron Hagen occupies a unique position in American music and independent cinema as both a concert music and opera composer and as the auteur director of internationally-laurelled feature-length "operafilms" that combine his own music and screenplays, placing him on the vanguard of a new genre described by OperaWire as "a neo-Gesamtkunstwerk form of opera cinema where each and everything seen on the screen, from the cuts to the lighting to the pacing, reflect the internal motivations of the story." His films are streaming on Amazon Plus Video, Tubi, Cineverse, Future Today, Reveel, among others, and have been supported by residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo and the Bogliasco Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award, among others. A Lifetime member of the Corporation of Yaddo, he has served as artist in residence at dozens of major universities and cultural institutions across the US. He is also a prolific essayist and director, and has published a critically-acclaimed memoir Duet with the Past (McFarland, 2019). Among the many labels that have released recordings of his works (including over a hundred art songs) are Sony Classical, Naxos, Bridge, and Albany. He lives in Upstate New York with his wife and two sons.