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.

Weinberg’s upcoming season celebrates the release of her album Pieces of Light with cellist Gabriel Cabezas, a meditation on the properties of light, altered perception, and hallucinatory experiences inspired by visual artist James Turrell, coming out on MASS MoCA Records in October 2026, as well as her new opera Claude & Marcel, with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann and director Elkhanah Pulitzer, commissioned by West Edge Opera and premiering in August 2027. 

Weinberg’s poetic monodrama ISOLA, a prismatic meditation on time, mental health, and isolation written in collaboration with librettist J. Mae Barizo, was premiered by Long Beach Opera in February 2024 to critical acclaim, and she was awarded a 2022 Opera America Discovery Grant to facilitate the development of Drift, a new opera with Barizo centering themes of motherhood, migration and climate change, commissioned by Opera Saratoga. 

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 So Percussion, yMusic, PUBLIQuartet, and the Aizuri Quartet. She has received commissions and awards from organizations including Chamber Music America, New Music USA, FringeArts and the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Barnes Foundation, and the Curtis Institute of Music. She has been awarded residencies at the Copland House, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Avaloch Farm Music Institute, among others. 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 currently holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor at the Butler School of Music at UT Austin and serves on the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music, and has held positions at institutions such as the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School, among others. She 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. Alyssa 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.