Photo by Bobby Carnevale
Photo by Cameron Cuchelain
Photo by Cameron Cuchelain
With my dear buds and collaborators, Jeff Dolven, and David Scher (not pictured, because taking the picture).
SHORT BIO:
Majel Connery is a composer, performer, and educator whose epic, immersive musical experiences invite audiences to enter the mind of nature. The New York Times has called her singing “superb” and the Wall Street Journal described her compositions as “thoroughly Schubertian.”
In her compositions, Connery blends electronic processing with raw vocal power, to create music both playful and profound—part sonic adventure and part emotional healing. Her choral work The Rivers Are Our Brothers has been toured and recorded by Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer. Most recently, Elderflora, her oratorio on the life and death of a tree, premiered at the Seattle Symphony and continues to tour both as a duo with electric cellist Felix Fan and in a variety of acoustic formats with larger ensembles.
A seasoned educator, Connery holds an A.B. in music from Princeton and a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Chicago. She has taught as a professor and visiting artist at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Princeton, Wellesley, and currently teaches from the road, appearing at a variety of institutions around the country including UVA, Cornish College for the Arts, Reed College, UNM Albuquerque, University of Iowa and next fall at University of Arizona and the University of Oregon.
In the domain of radio, Connery created music for the 5-part series “Gonads” on WNYC/Radiolab and performed with Radiolab Live. She hosts two podcasts: A Music of Their Own (NPR/CapRadio), and Reverberations (New Amsterdam Records).
LONG BIO:
Majel Connery is an unclassifiable artist whose work moves effortlessly between the concert hall and the punk rock club, between the sublime and the guttural, between the deeply personal and the ecologically cosmic.
A composer, vocalist, and storyteller, Connery crosses electronic processing with classical form to give voice to the natural world. Her immersive performances have appeared everywhere from The Kennedy Center and The Kitchen to DIY venues and dive bars. The New York Times has called her singing “superb”; the Wall Street Journal described her compositions as “thoroughly Schubertian.”
Connery’s song cycle The Rivers Are Our Brothers, a meditation on ecological interdependence, has been performed across the U.S. and abroad in multiple arrangements—including a 2023–24 tour with Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer and a performance with Australia’s Bowerbird Collective at the Carmel Bach Festival. Her most recent project, Elderflora, premiered at Seattle Symphony’s Octave 9 and has toured to The Exploratorium (San Francisco) and UNM ArtsLab. With her NYC-based art-rock duo Sky Creature (with Matt Walsh), she has appeared at Crystal Bridges Museum, BAMPFA, the Speed Art Museum, the Stanley Museum of Art, and the Knoxville Museum of Art, fusing raw energy with ethereal beauty.
She is also the host and creator of A Music of Their Own, an award-winning NPR podcast on women in music (CapRadio), and of Reverberations, a podcast for New Amsterdam Records. Her interest in radio began in 2019 with Radiolab’s Gonads series, for which she co-created music for five episodes—work that became Radiolab’s first-ever digital album release.
In academia, Connery has held artist residencies and professorships at Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Wellesley, and the University of Chicago, and continues to teach from the road, offering artist talks and guest lectures at institutions including St. John’s College, UVA, the University of Iowa, Reed College, Cornish College of the Arts, and UNM Albuquerque. Her fall 2025 tour includes an appointment as Trotter Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon.
A gifted arts administrator and nonprofit leader, from 2007 to 2018, Connery co-founded and ran Opera Cabal, an experimental opera company and think tank for creative and scholarly work on opera. The company’s production of ATTHIS at The Kitchen was hailed as “mesmerizing” by The New York Times. The community outreach wing of Opera Cabal, Connery organized and ran multiple art+science salons both in Chicago with physicists Sidney Nagel and Young-Kee Kim and in Berkeley with neuroscientist Matt Walker.
Connery holds a Ph.D. in musicology and an M.A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago, and an A.B. in music from Princeton University. She lives part-time in Catskill, NY, and part-time in the world at large—bringing her wild, warm, and transformative music wherever it’s needed most.
“the sultry music was superb when Majel Connery was airily singing”
“devotees of new music have long been enthralled by the work of vocalist and composer Majel Connery”
“The depth and control of her voice betray her classical vocal training, but like kindred spirit Shara Nova, Connery chooses a more straightforward sound that suits the emotional content of her work.”
—John Schaefer/New Sounds
“excellent vocals”
“REGINA SPECTOR-LIKE VOCALS”
“haunting, Bjork-like vocals”
“…uninflected and vibrato-free, alternately borrowing from the interpretive sophistication of jazz or musical theater and the deliberate naivete of folk-rock.”
—Wall Street Journal
“smooth, sultry vocals”
“Majel Connery has achieved the practically impossible.”