PAOLA PRESTINI is a composer, and entrepreneur.
In 1999, she co-founded VisionIntoArt, an interdisciplinary production company that has created over 50 multimedia productions worldwide and garnered the title “Best of 2009″ in classical and opera performances by TimeOut NY. VisionIntoArt has been called “always intriguing and frequently beguiling…” by the New York Times, and its partnership with organizations such as Beth Morrison Projects, Opera on Tap, The American Composers Orchestra and Young Audiences has created riveting programs.
Named by NPR as one of the Top 100 composers in the World under 40, her compositions have been deemed “radiant…[and] amorously evocative” by The New York Times, and praised by composers such as Terry Riley, ” music [that] speaks from the heart and inspires…” and by Osvaldo Golijov, “wrenching and tender and luminous and pure and exuberant: always vivid and always generous…” Her 2009 Tzadik release BODY MAPS has been featured on WQXR and Q2 and showcases new music’s great soloists. She has been commissioned and performed by Carnegie Hall, the Kronos Quartet, MATA, The Chicago Symphony, and twice by New York City Opera (VOX), and performed by soloists such as Helga Davis, Rinde Eckert, and Hila Plitmann. Her interdisciplinary collaborations with artists Erika Harrsch, Ali Hossaini, Carmen Kordas, and S. Katy Tucker have been lauded by TimeOut NY as “Ingeniously staged concert pieces that gracefully walk the line between opera and performance art.” Her work has been presented worldwide, in venues ranging from Zankel Hall, The Kitchen, The Whitney Museum, Le Poisson Rouge, PS 122, and the Stone in New York, to Etnafest, Milano’s Teatro Manzoni and Sound Res in Italy, and BEMUS in Belgrade, Serbia.
Current projects include works at BAM, the Kennedy Center, River to River, the Barbican Centre with the BBC orchestra, a collaboration with the Harare International Festival, and a new residency at the Krannert Center in collaborations with the Washington Chorus, the BBC orchestra, and artists such as Maya Beiser, Cornelius Dufallo, Gabriel Kahane, and Julian Crouch.
I was recently selected to be featured by the Paul and Daisy Soros fellowship:
Ms. Prestini’s residencies include the Hermitage Retreat, Sound Res, Ucross Foundation, and Sundance, and she has worked in colleges and in residencies in Italy, Africa, Mexico and Venezuela. She is currently a Musical Exchange Fellow for Carnegie Hall as a featured artist and was a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.
She has directed education programs at VisionIntoArt (Young Visionaries Director), the American Composers Orchestra (Director), and the New York Youth Symphony Making Score (Assoc. Director), and has taught and created curricula for the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, and the American Symphony Orchestra League in addition to designing web education projects for Carnegie Hall (The Leon Fleisher Schubert project).
She is a founding member of the Very Young Composers program at the New York Philharmonic for which she edited a book and has taught world-wide, from inner city schools in NY, to El Sistema in Venezuela.
Ms. Prestini’s commissions, grants and awards have come from the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, the BMI Fund, NYSCA (two Individual Artist grants), the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Concert Artist Guild, The Cary Trust, and the ASCAP Morton Gould Composers Award. She received her BM and MM at the Juilliard School and has studied with Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.