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, vocalist and roving musicologist combining the beauty of Classical music with the power of modern technology. Her voice has been called "superb" by the New York Times and her compositions "thoroughly Schubertian" by the Wall Street Journal. Connery’s environmental compositions have been performed around the world, including her own recent premiere of Elderflora at Seattle Symphony/Octave 9, and the 2023-24 tour of “The Rivers are our Brothers” by Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer. An educator working at the intersection of arts and scholarship, Connery has created incubator classrooms and productions with artists like Caroline Shaw and Ken Ueno on campuses like Stanford, UC Berkeley, Wellesley, and Princeton. In radio, Connery hosts the NPR/CapRadio podcast A Music of Their Own and Reverberations with New Amsterdam Records. She holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Chicago and an A.B. in music from Princeton.
LONG BIO:
Majel Connery is an unclassifiable artist who rarely says no to anything. Her music ranges from the guttural to the sublime, appearing in punk rock clubs at night and by day at major destinations from The Kennedy Center to The Kitchen. Her singing has been called “superb” by the New York Times and her composition “thoroughly Schubertian” by the Wall Street Journal.
A vocalist and composer, Connery combines Classical influences with modern technologies, leveraging the power of electronic processing to give voice to the environment. The Rivers are our Brothers, Connery’s song cycle on ecological responsibility, has been performed around the U.S. and abroad in multiple arrangements, including a 2023-24 tour with Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer, and Connery’s own performance of the cycle with Bowerbird Collective at Carmel Bach Festival. Her most recent song cycle, Elderflora, premiered at Seattle Symphony/Octave9 and is currently touring down the West Coast to Portland, Sierra Valley, Sacramento, San Francisco, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Connery has also released multiple albums with composer-collective Oracle Hysterical, and solo albums Anything Chartreuse and Orphea, a female retelling of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. With her art-rock duo, Sky Creature, Connery released a double EP and has performed at Crystal Bridges Museum, The Exploratorium, BAMPFA, Speed Art Museum, the Stanley Museum of Art, and Knoxville Museum of Art.
Connery is the host and producer of A Music of Their Own, an interview podcast on women in music (CapRadio/NPR) and the Reverberations podcast for New Amsterdam Records. Her radio career began in 2019 after creating music for five episodes of Radiolab’s “Gonads” series.
In academia, Connery has held a variety of artist residencies and professorships at institutions including Princeton, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Wellesley College, and the University of California Berkeley. Connery continues to teach and lecture from the road, with recent appearances at UVA, University of Iowa, Cornish College of the Arts, and Reed College. From 2007-2018, she co-founded and ran the experimental opera company, Opera Cabal, a think tank for the conjunction of creative and academic work on opera. Opera Cabal’s production of ATTHIS at The Kitchen was called “mesmerizing” by the New York Times.
Connery holds an M.A/Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and musicology, respectively, 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.
“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.”