American composer Jake Heggie is best known for Dead Man Walking (2000), the most widely performed new opera of the last 25 years, with a libretto by Terrence McNally, and his critically acclaimed operas Moby-Dick (2010), Three Decembers (2008), Intelligence (2023), and It’s a Wonderful Life (2016), all with libretti by Gene Scheer. In addition to 10 full-length operas and numerous one-acts, Heggie has composed more than 300 art songs, as well as concerti, chamber music, choral, and orchestral works, seeking out projects that invite a wide range of perspectives and possibilities. His compositions have been performed on five continents, and he regularly collaborates with some of the world’s most beloved artists as both composer and pianist.

In the 25/26 season, Dead Man Walking celebrates its 25th anniversary with performances across the globe, including Leonard Foglia’s production at San Francisco Opera, which originally commissioned the work, and the Western Australian premiere of this acutely American story with Freeze Frame Opera at the former Fremantle Prison, a World Heritage Site. A student production at University of Colorado Boulder – especially meaningful in this celebratory year, as CU Boulder was the first university to produce the work in 2007 – will be followed by a new Annilese Miskimmon production at English National Opera, co-commissioned by Opera North and Finnish National Opera. Elsewhere this season, Heggie’s opera Intelligence receives a new production at Virginia Opera, as well as a world premiere album release through a new partnership between Houston Grand Opera and the LSO Live label. Heggie’s “Fire,” commissioned by violinist Joshua Bell for his concerto The Elements, travels to Houston Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, which serves as the work’s Canadian premiere. Additionally, new commissions appear with London Symphony Orchestra at Classical Pride London, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Madison Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. This season also marks a new chapter in legacy-building, as Heggie joins the faculty of San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Diane B. Wilsey Distinguished Professor of Composition.

Often blurring the storytelling lines between art song and opera, Heggie consistently champions women in his work. In collaboration with Margaret Atwood, Songs for Murdered Sisters was created in response to the global epidemic of gender-based violence and premiered by baritone Joshua Hopkins. The album was nominated for Classical Album of the Year at the Juno Awards, and a subsequent project with Atwood, the song cycle Oh Children, was then commissioned by Merola Opera Program. Other recent commissions include Crossing Borders, with a libretto by Gene Scheer based on the journals of Nora Schapiro, which was commissioned by the George and Nora London Foundation, and the monodrama Earth 2.0, written with librettist Anita Amirrezvani and co-commissioned by Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Summer Music Festival, and Grand Rapids Symphony.

Heggie is particularly drawn to the mezzo voice and has longstanding creative partnerships with Frederica von Stade, Joyce DiDonato, Susan Graham, Sasha Cooke, and Jamie Barton, whose album with Heggie, Unexpected Shadows, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Heggie’s recent nine-city recital tour with Barton showcased What I Miss The Most, a song cycle with new texts by important voices including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sister Helen Prejean, and Patti LuPone.

Heggie delights in uncovering hidden stories, and his artistic relationship with Music of Remembrance has brought lesser-known perspectives from the Holocaust, including those of queer people and political dissidents, to the stage in MOR-commissioned works like Before It All Goes Dark (2024), recently released on Warner Classics, Another Sunrise (2012) and For A Look or a Touch (2008), as well as in Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope (2020), commissioned by Music at Kohl Mansion. Other recent premieres include Overture (2023) for the New Century Chamber Orchestra, Lake Tahoe Symphonic Reflections (2022) for the Classical Tahoe Festival, and Fantasy Suite 1803 (2022) for violinist Daniel Hope and pianist Lise de la Salle, commissioned by Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

Several Heggie works have established themselves in the classical canon. Dead Man Walking, lauded by the Chicago Tribune as “the most celebrated American opera of the century,” has received more than 80 international productions since its San Francisco Opera premiere in October 2000. In addition to the highly acclaimed Metropolitan Opera premiere, Dead Man Walking has been received by enthusiastic audiences all over the United States and at major theaters in Dresden, Vienna, London, Madrid, Copenhagen, Sydney, Montréal, Calgary, Dublin, and Cape Town. Likewise, Three Decembers has received nearly 40 international productions, while Great Scott was recognized with a Grammy nomination for Best New Classical Composition. Moby-Dick was telecast in Great Performances’ 40th Season, subsequently released on DVD, and served as the subject of the book A Grand Opera for the 21st Century.

Hailed by the Wall Street Journal as “arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer,” Heggie is a long-time mentor of young composers, singers, and pianists. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Eddie Medora King Prize from UT Austin’s Butler School of Music, and the Champion Award from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Heggie was the keynote speaker for the 2016 meeting of National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) and has given commencement addresses at SFCM, Eastman School of Music, Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music, and UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. He is a frequent guest artist at universities and conservatories, including Eastman, Northwestern, Cornell, Boston University, Cincinnati Conservatory, Peabody Conservatory, The Royal Conservatory in Toronto, USC’s Thornton School, and Vanderbilt University. He has been a guest artist at SongFest for more than 20 years and is the proud recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Named Musical America’s 2025 Composer of the Year, Heggie was also recently inducted into the OPERA America Hall of Fame, joining a cohort of artists, administrators, and advocates who have strengthened the art form and the field.

Heggie has served as an advisor and mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative, CU Boulder’s New Opera Workshop, and Chicago Opera Theater’s Vanguard Initiative. His own teachers have included Ernst Bacon, with whom he studied composition as a teenager, as well as pianist Johana Harris and composers Roger Bourland, Paul DesMarais, and David Raksin at UCLA. Prior to composing Dead Man Walking, he was mentored by his friend, the late Carlisle Floyd.

Heggie continues to write all his work by hand, believing that a visceral, physical connection to the score is an essential part of composition. Since 1993, he has made his home in San Francisco, where he lives with his husband, Curt Branom.