About this Artist

Andrew Norman (b. 1979) is a Los Angeles-based composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music. 

Andrew’s work draws on an eclectic mix of sounds and notational practices from both the avant-garde and classical traditions. He is increasingly interested in story-telling in music, and specifically in the ways non-linear, narrative-scrambling ideas from other time-based media might intersect with traditional symphonic forms. His distinctive, often fragmented and highly energetic work has been cited in The New York Times for its “daring juxtapositions and dazzling colors,” in the Boston Globe for its “staggering imagination,” and in the Los Angeles Times for its “audacious” spirit and “Chaplinesque” wit. 

Andrew’s symphonic works have been performed by leading ensembles worldwide, including the Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York Philharmonic orchestras, the Philadelphia and Minnesota Orchestras, the BBC, Saint Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, Oregon, and Melbourne Symphonies, the Orpheus, Saint Paul, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras, the Tonhalle Orchester, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, and many others.  Andrew’s music has been championed by eminent conductors, including John Adams, Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, Simon Rattle, and David Robertson.

In recent seasons, Andrew’s chamber music has been played by the Ensemble InterContemporain, the Calder Quartet, A Far Cry, and the Sharoun Ensemble. It has been featured at the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Wordless Music Series, the CONTACT! series, the Ojai Festival, the MATA Festival, the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the Green Umbrella series, the Monday Evening Concerts, and the Aspen Music Festival.

Andrew was recently named Musical America’s 2017 Composer of the Year. He is the recipient of the 2004 Jacob Druckman Prize, the 2005 ASCAP Nissim and Leo Kaplan Prizes, the 2006 Rome Prize, the 2009 Berlin Prize, and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship. He joined the roster of Young Concert Artists as Composer in Residence in 2008 and held the title “Komponist für Heidelberg” for the 2010/11 season. Andrew has served as Composer in Residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Opera Philadelphia, and he currently holds that post with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Andrew’s string trio The Companion Guide to Rome was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music, and his large-scale orchestral work Play was named one of NPR’s top 50 albums of 2015, nominated for a 2016 Grammy, recently won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and was praised in The New York Times as a “breathtaking masterpiece” and “a revolution in music.”

Andrew is a committed educator who enjoys helping people of all ages explore and create music. He has written pieces to be performed by and for the young, and has held educational residencies with various institutions across the country. Andrew joined the faculty of the USC Thornton School of Music in 2013, and he is thrilled to serve as the director of the L.A. Phil’s Composer Fellowship Program for young composers. 

Andrew recently finished two piano concertos, Suspend, for Emanual Ax, and Split, for Jeffrey Kahane, as well as a percussion concerto, Switch, for Colin Currie. Upcoming projects include a symphony for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and collaborations with Jeremy Denk, Jennifer Koh, Johannes Moser, yMusic, and the Berlin Philharmonic. 

Andrew’s works are published by Schott Music.