Biography
Praised for “astonishingly beautiful” (The New York Times) music and a “singular compositional voice, unlike any that has been heard in opera before” (The New Yorker), composer Gregory Spears is acclaimed for his distinctive blend of romanticism, minimalism, and early music influences, which seeks to collapse layers of history into one moment, our own. His works, spanning opera, orchestral, chamber, and vocal music, are celebrated for their melodic richness, emotional clarity, and sensitivity to text.
Spears’ operas have been staged by leading companies in the U.S. and abroad. Spears’ latest opera, Sleepers Awake, inspired by the writings of modernist Swiss author Robert Walser and other literary sources, premiered at Opera Philadelphia in spring 2026 and was praised as “ravishingly beautiful” (parterre box) and “haunting” and “evocative” (The Wall Street Journal). Ahead of the premiere, Spears was profiled by The New York Times in an article titled “A Composer Who Loops Musical Time and History.”
Highlights of Spears' 2026-2027 season include the world premiere of a large-scale orchestral piece, The Mysteries, commissioned by a consortium including the Columbus Symphony, which will premiere the work in Ohio before bringing it to Carnegie Hall in celebration of the orchestra’s 75th anniversary, followed by performances with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra; the world premiere of Bartleby, a song cycle based on Herman Melville’s enigmatic short story, written for mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and pianist Christopher Cano, at the Tucson Desert Song Festival; and performances of his opera for young people written in collaboration with librettist Kathryn Walat, Jason and the Argonauts, by Welsh National Opera.
Spears’ best-known work, Fellow Travelers (libretto by Greg Pierce), is celebrated as a modern classic. The world premiere at Cincinnati Opera in 2016 was praised as "one of the most accomplished new operas I have seen in recent years" (Chicago Tribune) and an opera that "seems assured of lasting appeal" (The New York Times), and a commercial recording was released in 2017. Fellow Travelers has been produced 20 times, including at the Prototype Festival in New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, Arizona Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Parallèle, and London’s University College Opera. For the opera’s tenth anniversary, Fellow Travelers is being performed in a multi-year tour, joined by a consortium of companies including Seattle Opera, Portland Opera, San Diego Opera, and the 2026 Glimmerglass Festival. The tour continues in Spears’ 2026-2027 season with performances presented by Austin Opera, and the opera returns to New York at BAM in April 2027. Opera McGill in Montreal presents a new production in fall 2026.
Spears has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Seraphic Fire, The Crossing, Bang on a Can, Volti, BMI/Concert Artists Guild, Vocal Arts DC, New York Polyphony, The New York International Piano Competition, JACK Quartet, and the New York Youth Symphony, among many others.
He has continued to shape the landscape of contemporary opera with works that marry innovative musical language with compelling storytelling. His opera The Righteous, with a libretto by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, was commissioned by Santa Fe Opera and premiered in 2024 to critical acclaim; it was named a “Critic’s Pick” by The New York Times and shortlisted for an International Opera Award. Earlier collaborations with Smith include Castor and Patience, commissioned for Cincinnati Opera’s centennial season and premiered in 2022, a work praised as “warm, steady, restrained” with “outpourings so fervent, the melodies so sweet, that you can find yourself moved nearly to tears” by The New York Times. In the 2021-2022 season, the New York Philharmonic commissioned and premiered Love Story, an orchestral song cycle for countertenor and orchestra, featuring another text by Smith.
Spears’ first opera, Paul’s Case, based on the Willa Cather short story and written in collaboration with librettist Kathryn Walat, was called “a masterpiece” by The New York Observer and “a compact, alluring, and attractively obsessive work” by New York Magazine. Developed by American Opera Projects, it premiered with Urban Arias in 2013, was restaged at the Prototype Festival in New York, and received a new production at Pittsburgh Opera in 2014. The original cast recording of Paul's Case was released on National Sawdust's record label in 2019. Spears and Walat also wrote the children’s opera Jason and the Argonauts, which premiered at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2016 and has since been performed for more than 20,000 schoolchildren. His opera O Columbia, about space exploration, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, premiered at Houston Grand Opera in 2015.
Beyond opera, Spears has developed a wide-ranging catalog of orchestral, choral, and chamber works such as Secrets, an album-length work for voices and period instruments inspired by a painting at The Frick Collection, and A New Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei (2013), Spears’ alternate completion of Mozart’s Requiem. His Requiem, released by New Amsterdam Records, and Seven Days showcase his gift for balancing intimacy with dramatic scale. Seven Days was first introduced as a custom-designed app produced by 92nd Street Y in 2021 before its album release in 2025, both featuring pianist Pedja Mužijević. Other notable commissions include The Bitter Good, written for New York Polyphony with support from Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning Program in 2016; The Tower and the Garden, a work for choir and string quartet underwritten by the Ann Stookey Fund for New Music and released on Parma Recordings by The Crossing in 2021; and his Double Trumpet Concerto in 2019, commissioned by Concert Artists Guild. He composed the soundtrack for Kit Monkman’s feature film Macbeth (2018), scored for mostly 18th-century instruments.
Spears is the recipient of numerous honors, including residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Copland House, and awards from BMI and ASCAP. He was a participant and later a composer mentor for The American Opera Project's Composers & the Voice Program, as well as a recent mentor composer for Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative.
He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and Yale School of Music and earned a PhD in composition from Princeton University. He also studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen with composer Hans Abrahamsen.
Spears teaches at New York University and Purchase College, and his music is published by Schott Music and Schott PSNY.