Scott Ordway (b. 1984, California) is an American composer and multimedia artist whose widely acclaimed music and mixed-media projects have been called “exquisite” (New York Times) and “arresting” (Gramophone), “hypnotic” (BBC) and “a marvel” (Philadelphia Inquirer). His works are presented on major concert stages around the world with recent and upcoming performances at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Wigmore Hall, Park Avenue Armory, Hong Kong City Hall Theater, Bing Concert Hall of Stanford University, and the Beijing Modern, Hong Kong Arts, Bang on a Can, and Aspen Music Festivals, among many others.
Drawing on his deep interest in literature, languages, and the humanities, Ordway’s remarkably diverse works often fuse his music with text (frequently his own), video, and photography to explore an eclectic array of contemporary themes including ecology, religion and philosophy, and the landscape and culture of the American West.
Hailed as “an American response to Sibelius” by the Boston Globe, his music has been performed by the Hong Kong, Buffalo, and Colorado Springs Philharmonics; Tucson Symphony; vocal ensembles Roomful of Teeth, Lorelei, and The Thirteen; and soloists including Sasha Cooke, Arlen Hlusko, Anyango Yarbo-Davenport, Sonja Tengblad, and Emily Marvosh, among many others. His chamber music collaborations include SOLI Chamber Ensemble, Tanglewood New Fromm Players, Norbotten NEO (Sweden), and the Jasper, Momenta, Daedalus, and Arneis String Quartets.
Ordway has released four critically-acclaimed solo recordings on the Acis label in addition to compilation appearances on Naxos, Bright Shiny Things, and TRPTK (Netherlands). In 2025, he will release recordings of two choral works: North Woods with the Lorelei Ensemble and Three Kalevala Songs with Rutgers University Kirkpatrick Choir.
In addition to his work as a composer, he is increasingly active as a writer (creating libretti for opera, art song, and choral music), director, video artist, and photographer. In 2023, he presented his first solo photography exhibition at the Kunstverein Familie Montez in Frankfurt am Main.
His work is supported by numerous awards, fellowships, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, NewMusicUSA, the American Composers Orchestra, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, American Music Center, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, American Composers Forum, and American Opera Projects, where he was a Fellow. A recipient of the Tuttle Creative Residency Award from Haverford College’s Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities, he has also been invited for residencies at Copland House, Visby International Center for Composers (Sweden), Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (WY), Willapa Bay AiR (WA), and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences, where he was a Distinguished Fellow. He has served as Composer-in-Residence at the Cabrillo, Newburyport, and Carolina Chamber Music Festivals.
As a conductor, Ordway has held posts with the Syzygy New Music Ensemble (NYC) and Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (Oregon), and was Associate Conductor of the Juventas New Music Ensemble, an ensemble-in-residence at the Boston Conservatory. As a champion for the music of our time, he has presented more than 50 new works by young and emerging composers.
Ordway studied at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Puget Sound, the Freie Universität Berlin, and Accademia Chigiana where his teachers included Samuel Adler, Azio Corghi, Robert Hutchinson, Robert Kyr, James Primosch, Jay Reise, and Veljo Tormis.
A voting member of the Recording Academy, Scott currently serves as Associate Professor of Music and Head of Composition at Rutgers University. He lives in Philadelphia where he taught previously at the Curtis Institute of Music.
