Brian Field is a composer of arresting range and rare expressive depth, whose music fuses post-romantic lyricism, minimalist clarity, and jazz-inflected vitality. This stylistic tapestry, praised by Gramophone for its “winning melodic flow and harmonic translucency,” and described by Fanfare as stretching “tonality to and beyond its limits, but always in a soaring, lyrical manner,” has garnered international acclaim.
Field’s catalogue spans works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra, chorus, electroacoustic media, ballet, stage, and television. His music has been widely performed across the United States and around the globe, and recorded on numerous labels, with streaming access across all major platforms.
His artistry has earned him a host of prestigious honors, including a McKnight Foundation Fellowship, the Benenti Foundation Recording Prize, First Prize in the Briar Cliff Choral Music Competition, and First Prize in the Victor Herbert ASCAP Young Composers’ Contest, among dozens of others.
Field began his musical journey at the piano at age eight and turned to composition in earnest at sixteen. He pursued undergraduate studies in music and English literature at Connecticut College, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. There, he studied composition with Noel Zahler, piano with Zosia Jacynowicz, organ with John Anthony, and harpsichord and figured bass with Linda Skernick.
He went on to earn his Master of Music degree at The Juilliard School, where he studied with Milton Babbitt, and completed his Doctorate at Columbia University as a President’s Fellow, working with George Edwards and Mario Davidovsky.
Beyond the concert hall, Field has distinguished himself as a composer deeply engaged with social and political issues. His landmark environmental initiative, Passions for our Tortured Planet, launched in 2022, centers on his piano suite Three Passions for our Tortured Planet. The project—performed worldwide by over 100 artists—supports climate advocacy and directs all royalties to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Field also became the first composer granted permission to set the poetry of Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman to music. His work for mezzo-soprano and orchestra Everything Hurts, based on Gorman’s “Hymn for the Hurting,” stands as a moving response to gun violence in America, with proceeds donated in full to Everytown for Gun Safety.
Whether writing for intimate forces or full orchestra, Brian Field composes with a compelling voice that is at once contemporary and timeless—an artist committed to beauty, intellect, and conscience.