Paola Prestini

Named a “composer-impresario” by The New Yorker, Paola Prestini is a composer, and entrepreneur. Her compositions have been deemed “radiant”[and] amorously evocative” by The New York Times, and praised by composers such as Terry Riley, ” music [that] speaks from the heart and inspires” and by Osvaldo Golijov, “wrenching and tender and luminous and pure and exuberant: always vivid and always generous.”

In 1999, while still a student at the Juilliard School, she co-founded VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary production company that has created over 70 multimedia productions worldwide and garnered the title “Best of 2009”³ in classical and opera performances by TimeOut NY. The New York Times has hailed ‘her gift for bringing together disparate artists, technicians and other creative professionals to produce cross-disciplinary works greater than the sum of their parts.” VisionIntoArt has been called “always intriguing and frequently beguiling… [VIA creates] flamboyant, confounding and enticing collaborations among choreographers, visual artists, actors and composers…” by The New York Times, and its partnership with organizations such as Beth Morrison Projects and New Amsterdam Records has created riveting and genre bending programs. She was recently appointed the Creative Director of the Brooklyn based new venue and non profit, Original Music Workshop (OMW).

Named by NPR as one of the Top 100 composers in the World under 40, her Tzadik release BODY MAPS has been featured on WQXR and Q2 and showcases new music’s great soloists. She has been commissioned and performed by Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony, the Kronos Quartet, New York City Opera (VOX), Opera America, and the Washington Chorus, and performed by soloists such as Isabel Leonard, Jeffrey Zeigler, Helga Davis, Chris Burchett, and Hila Plitmann. Her interdisciplinary collaborations with artists Erika Harrsch, Ali Hossaini, Carmen Kordas, and S. Katy Tucker have been lauded by TimeOut NY as “Ingeniously staged concert pieces that gracefully walk the line between opera and performance art.” Her work has been presented worldwide, in venues ranging from Zankel Hall, the Kennedy Center, The Kitchen, HERE, The Whitney Museum, the River to River festival, Le Poisson Rouge, PS 122, and the Stone in New York, to Italian festivals such as Etnafest and Milano’s Teatro Manzoni, and BEMUS in Belgrade, Serbia.