Jake Landau

Jake Landau (Pre-College ’13, BM ’17, composition) was born in 1995 in Queens. He began taking formal composition lessons from Lawrence Rosen in middle school and studied composition with Andrew Thomas at Juilliard’s Pre-College. During this time, he participated in the New York Youth Symphony’s composition program and was a teaching artist intern at the New York Philharmonic.

In 2013, he began his undergraduate composition studies at Juilliard with John Corigliano, becoming the youngest person ever accepted to study with Corigliano. In 2014, he was the youngest composition fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with Pulitzer-winning composer Steven Stucky. In 2015, he spent three months in Reykjavik, Iceland, working at the indie record label Bedroom Community and its in-house recording studio, Greenhouse Studios. After graduating from Juilliard, he received his master’s degree with first-class honors from the University of Oxford, where his most notable commission was a piece for the Crown of the Netherlands and the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, premiered at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. While at Oxford, he wrote his final on the history and practice of translating operas into English and performed with the Arcadian Singers and early-music group the Bate Players.

Landau has received commissions from and/or been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Houston Grand Opera, and Premiere Division Ballet, and in venues including David Geffen Hall, Carnegie Hall, and New York Live Arts Theater. In 2016, his piece Ayres, for two-part chorus and piano, was published by G. Schirmer as part of the Judith Clurman G. Schirmer Choral Series. One year later, he became the youngest-ever winner of the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, leading to a publication of his orchestral overture Hardware Love by Edition Peters.

Landau is active as a composer, lyricist, librettist, conductor, pianist, electronic music producer, and period keyboardist. He has won numerous awards for his music and has produced a diverse output of orchestral, chamber, vocal, electronic, dance, theatrical, and solo music.