Pamela Madsen
Pamela Madsen, Composer & Professor of Composition at California State University, Fullerton
Pamela Madsen is a composer, performer, theorist and curator of new music. From her massive landscape inspired projects and intimate chamber music creations to her multi-media opera collaborations and immersive deep listening works, she has created a body of work focusing on the integration of image, music and text, with research on the impact of sound, biomechanisms of vibro-acoustics and the environment.
Recent Accolades
Copland House Residency, 2025
MacDowell Colony Residency, 2025
Huntington Library Fellowship Award Gloria Ricci Lothrop Fellow and a Mellon Fellow, 2023-24
Opera America Discovery Grant, 2022
National Endowment for the Arts-Art Work Award, 2020-22
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Pamela Madsen is a composer, performer, theorist, writer and curator of new music. From massive immersive concert-length projects, solo works, chamber music to multi-media opera collaborations, her creative projects and research focuses on the evolution of compositional thought, improvisation, and electronic music, illuminating issues of social change, the environment, and women in music.
Madsen’s works have been commissioned and premiered world-wide by such artists as Brightwork newmusic, soprano Tony Arnold, flutist Claire Chase, bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood, ModernMedieval, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Galan and Verdehr Trios, cellist Ashley Bathgate, Zeitgeist, and the JACK, Ethel, Lyris, Formalist and Arditti string quartets. Her multimedia collaborators include visual artists Quintan Ana Wikswo, Camille Seaman, Jimena Sarno and Judy Chicago. Her major concert-length projects have been awarded funding by the National Endowment for the Arts, Opera America, and New Music USA, with additional honors as a Huntington Library Mellon Research Fellow, Alpert Award Panelist, Creative Capital artist “on the radar”. She has received artist residencies at MacDowell Colony, UCross, Wyoming, Women’s International Studies Center, New Mexico, Wurlitzer Foundation Award, with international Russia/Siberia Concert tour, featured composer at Pulsar Festival, Denmark and is a frequent guest artist at festivals and universities worldwide.
With a Ph.D. in Music Composition from UCSD, Mellon Foundation Doctoral Research Award in theory at Yale University, Post- Doctoral research in Music Technology at IRCAM, Paris, and Deep Listening Certificate with Pauline Oliveros. She is Director of the Annual New Music Festival, InterArts Collaborative Projects at Cal State Fullerton where she is Professor of Music Composition, Music Theory and Director of the New Music Ensemble.
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Fragments from the Wasteland (2024)
Why Women Went West (2024) - two act opera and album
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