Cecilia Livingston
Artist Management
Known for “arresting and strangely alluring” music (Gramophone) that asks “slow burning, sometimes fiery questions” (The New York Times), Cecilia Livingston specializes in composing for voice. She was Composer-in-Residence at the Canadian Opera Company from 2022-2025, following three years as composer-in-residence at Glyndebourne. Her music is driven by melody, mixing styles to create work that is lyrical and unsettling, and her work has been performed at Glyndebourne, Teatro Colón, Teatro Carlo Felice, the Canadian Opera Company, Bang on a Can’s summer festival, Toronto’s Nuit Blanche festival, in recital at Carnegie Hall, L’Auditori de Barcelona, the Barbican, the Kennedy Center, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Tafelmusik, and Soundstreams, and is available on recording from Deutsche Grammophon. Current projects include new works for Sparks & Wiry Cries and for the Canadian Opera Company. Upon awarding Cecilia the Louis Applebaum Composers Award for excellence in composition for theatre, music theatre, dance or opera, the assessment jury wrote “Each work shares a deeply personal voice full of imagination and originality. She has made a profound contribution to contemporary opera in Canada and around the world.” Cecilia’s creative work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and SOCAN Foundation. She is Vice-President of the Canadian League of Composers.
"Livingston's settings of her own and others' words abound with textural intensity and myriad styles that suggest an exploration and boundlessness that is somehow always cohesive. Throughout, I couldn’t help feeling echoes of Britten seeping in, hearing resonances between the two artists a generation apart – an English pastoralism that is melancholy… hewn by wind and sand, as sea-swept and gritty as it is tender.”
Opera Canada
Image gallery
