Jake Landau

Jake Landau (he/him), b. 1995, is an American composer of opera, musical theater, ballet, and instrumental music. His works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Houston Grand Opera, and Premiere Division Ballet in venues as diverse as Carnegie Hall, Birdland Jazz Club, and the Royal Palace of Amsterdam. He is a graduate of the The Juilliard School, where his ongoing mentorship under John Corigliano began, and Oxford University, from which he holds a Masters degree with First Class Honours. Select works of his have been published by G. Schirmer (Ayres, for SA and piano) and Edition Peters (Hardware Love, for orchestra). 

At age 16, he was accepted to Oscar-, Grammy-, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Corigliano’s studio at The Juilliard School. At Juilliard and as a Composition Fellow at summer institutions including the prestigious Aspen Music Festival, Landau created his core body of work in chamber and orchestral music. At the same time, he worked in premiere pop music studios, experimental queer nightclubs, and as an audition pianist for both opera and Broadway productions. This unique background led him to a sound that at turns explores and ignores genre, in which hit-factory hooks interact with the concept-driven architectures of classical music—all in service of a theatrical worldbuilding lifted, in abstract, from fantasy novels.  

In addition to his composing in both classical and commercial worlds, Landau is a lyricist, conductor, and Baroque keyboardist. A regular performer of his own works and others’, he has written, arranged, and music-directed concerts for a wide-range of singers from celebrated indie artists to headlining Broadway stars at iconic venues including Birdland Jazz Club, The Greenroom 42, and 54 Below.

Landau is the youngest-ever winner of the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; one of NYFOS’S (New York Festival of Song) “9 under 34” composers; a board member of experimental theater company Off-Brand Opera; a Clarendon Scholar of Oxford University; and an Extension-Division faculty member at Juilliard in New York, where he is based full-time. Landau is represented by UIA Talent Agency.