Gilda Lyons

Gilda Lyons (born January 11, 1975, Rhinebeck, New York) is an American composer, vocalist, and visual artist who writes music that “combines elements of renaissance, neo-baroque, spectral, agitprop Music Theater, and extended vocalism”. Education and early career Lyons attended Bard College, where she studied with Joan Tower and Daron Hagen, and in 1997 received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Composition, Vocal Performance, and Visual Arts. She then attended the University of Pittsburgh, where she studied with Eric Moe and Anne LeBaron, and received a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition and Theory in 2001. She studied with Daria Semegen and Peter Winkler at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2005. Lyons also studied voice, first at Bard with Arthur Burrows, then privately with heldentenor Barry Busse. American Opera Projects in New York City chose her doctoral dissertation, “The Walled Up Wife” (opera, libretto and music by Lyons, 2005), for development and concert premiere. Her critically successful 2015 opera, A New Kind of Fallout, commissioned and premiered by the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh with a libretto by