Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer and pianist based in New York. Her works extend beyond pure concert music, to include projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance.
Her most recent commission was for Dear Life, a 25-minute work for the National Arts Center Orchestra of Canada; and scheduled to receive its U.S. premiere at the 2018 Cabrillo Festival. Other large-scale projects include a 2015 evening-length music theatre piece, Phonobellow (co-written with David Adamcyk) for ICE, which features five musicians, a large kinetic sound sculpture, electronics, and video.
Di Castri’s orchestral compositions have been commissioned by John Adams, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, and Esprit Orchestra, and have been featured by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Tokyo Symphony, Amazonas Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among others. She has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, L.A. Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in their chamber music series and has worked with many leading new music groups, including Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink, Ekmeles, Yarn/Wire, the NEM, and JACK Quartet. Di Castri received the 2012 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, and participated in Ircam’s Manifeste Festival in Paris, writing an interactive electronic work for ZOO, Thomas Hauert’s dance company.
Other recent projects include a string quartet for the Banff International String Quartet Competition, a two-piano piece for Yarn/Wire, a piece for two percussionists and electronics premiered at her 2016 Miller Theatre composer portrait concert, and a solo piano work for Julia Den Boer, commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Fund. Upcoming projects include an ongoing solo percussion collaboration with Diego Espinosa, a duo with violinist Jenny Koh, a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress for Steve Schick and ICE, an octet for JACK Quartet and Parker Quartet, and a new work for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.
Di Castri received her Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance and Composition at McGill University, and her doctorate from Columbia University in composition. She is currently the Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia.
She returns to Cabrillo for Dear Life, featuring soprano Mary Mackenzie, on August 3, during the Aural Histories concert.
