Full Bio

American composer Jake Heggie is best known for Dead Man Walking (2000), the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, with a libretto by Terrence McNally, and his critically acclaimed operas Moby-Dick (2010), Three Decembers (2008), Intelligence (2023), and It’s a Wonderful Life (2016), all with libretti by Gene Scheer. In addition to 10 full-length operas and numerous one-acts, Heggie has composed more than 300 art songs, as well as concerti, chamber music, choral, and orchestral works. His compositions have been performed on five continents, and he regularly collaborates with some of the world’s most beloved artists as both composer and pianist.

Heggie actively seeks out projects that invite a wide range of perspectives and possibilities. In the 24/25 season, he re-teams with choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Urban Bush Women for the world premiere of Earth 2.0, a monodrama commissioned by Fort Worth Symphony, featuring countertenor Key’mon Murrah with Robert Spano conducting. Heggie’s acclaimed collaboration with Margaret Atwood, Songs for Murdered Sisters, appears at Carnegie Hall and Marian Anderson Hall with The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. A new commission for fast-rising countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen also appears at Carnegie Hall before touring to Houston and Washington, D.C. Following the highly acclaimed Met premiere of Dead Man Walking, the Metropolitan Opera welcomes a stunning Leonard Foglia production of Moby-Dick.

Often blurring the storytelling lines between art song and opera, Heggie consistently champions women in his work. Songs for Murdered Sisters, the aforementioned collaboration with the great Margaret Atwood, was created in response to the global epidemic of gender-based violence and premiered by baritone Joshua Hopkins. The album was nominated for Classical Album of the Year at the 2022 Juno Awards. Heggie is particularly drawn to the mezzo voice and has longstanding creative partnerships with Frederica von Stade, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Sasha Cooke, and Jamie Barton, whose album with Heggie, Unexpected Shadows, earned a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Heggie’s recent nine-city recital tour with Barton showcased What I Miss The Most, a song cycle with new texts by important voices including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sister Helen Prejean, and Patti LuPone.

Heggie delights in uncovering hidden stories, and his artistic relationship with Music of Remembrance has brought lesser-known perspectives from the Holocaust, including those of queer people and political dissidents, to the stage in MOR-commissioned works like Before It All Goes Dark (2024), Another Sunrise (2012) and For A Look or a Touch (2008), as well as in Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope (2020), commissioned by Music at Kohl Mansion. Other recent premieres include Overture (2023) for the New Century Chamber Orchestra, Lake Tahoe Symphonic Reflections (2022) for the Classical Tahoe Festival, and Fantasy Suite 1803 (2022) for violinist Daniel Hope and pianist Lise de la Salle, commissioned by Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

Several Heggie works have established themselves in the classical canon. Dead Man Walking, lauded by the Chicago Tribune as “the most celebrated American opera of the century,” has received more than 75 international productions since its San Francisco Opera premiere in October 2000. In addition to numerous performances throughout the United States, Dead Man Walking has been received by enthusiastic audiences at major theaters in Dresden, Vienna, London, Madrid, Copenhagen, Sydney, Montréal, Calgary, Dublin, and Cape Town. Likewise, Three Decembers has received nearly 40 international productions, while Great Scott was recognized with a Grammy nomination for Best New Classical Composition. Moby-Dick was telecast in Great Performances’ 40th Season, subsequently released on DVD, and served as the subject of the book A Grand Opera for the 21st Century.

Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer,” Heggie is a long-time mentor of young composers, singers, and pianists. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Eddie Medora King Prize from UT Austin’s Butler School of Music, and the Champion Award from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Heggie was the keynote speaker for the 2016 meeting of National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) and has given commencement addresses at SFCM, Eastman School of Music, Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, and UCLA’s Alpert School of Music. He is a frequent guest artist at universities and conservatories, including Eastman, Northwestern, Cornell, Boston University, Cincinnati Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, The Royal Conservatory in Toronto, USC’s Thornton School, and Vanderbilt University. He has been a guest artist at SongFest for more than 20 years and is the proud recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2025, Heggie will be inducted into the OPERA America Hall of Fame, joining a cohort of artists, administrators, and advocates who have strengthened the art form and the field.

Heggie has served as an advisor and mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, CU Boulder’s New Opera Workshop, and Chicago Opera Theater’s Vanguard Initiative. His own teachers have included Ernst Bacon, with whom he studied composition as a teenager, as well as pianist Johana Harris and composers Roger Bourland, Paul DesMarais, and David Raksin at UCLA. Prior to composing Dead Man Walking, he was mentored by his friend, the late Carlisle Floyd.

Heggie continues to write all his work by hand, believing that a visceral, physical connection to the score is an essential part of composition. Since 1993, he has made his home in San Francisco, where he lives with his husband, Curt Branom.