Composer Alyssa Weinberg uses color, texture, and gesture to channel big emotions, creating music that is “quite literally stunning” (Chicago Tribune). She is fascinated with perception and loves to play with form, subverting expectations to create surreal scenarios, often in dreamy, multidisciplinary productions.

Upcoming projects include Pieces of Light, a collaborative album with cellist Gabriel Cabezas, inspired by sensory manipulation and light as an artistic medium, and Drift, a new opera in collaboration with librettist J. Mae Barizo supported by a 2022 Opera America Discovery Grant. Recently, the pair created ISOLA, a prismatic monodrama about time, mental health, and isolation. 

Weinberg’s music has been performed by celebrated artists and ensembles around the world, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, as well as Eighth Blackbird, Sō Percussion, yMusic, and the Aizuri Quartet. She has received commissions and awards from organizations including Chamber Music America, FringeArts, and the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Barnes Foundation, and the Curtis Institute of Music, and recently received a Copland House Award where she will be in residence in June 2023. Weinberg’s percussion music has been celebrated for its inventive use of color and innovative performance techniques, most notably for her prepared vibraphone duo Table Talk which has received hundreds of performances across the globe. 

A dedicated educator, Weinberg is the Founding Director of the Composers Institute at the Lake George Music Festival, a summer program that centers mentorship and community alongside the craft of composition. She holds the position of guest Composer in Residence at Utah State University for the 2023-24 season and has held teaching positions at Princeton University, Butler School of Music at UT Austin, Mannes School of Music, Montclair State University, and Juilliard Pre-College. 

Weinberg holds a PhD in composition from Princeton University, as well as degrees from Vanderbilt University, Manhattan School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music.