Cara Haxo

Degrees

• B.M., The College of Wooster
• M.M., Butler University
• Ph.D., University of Oregon

Described as “movingly lyrical” (Avant Music News) and “quirky but attractive” (The Art Music Lounge), the music of Cara Haxo (she/her/hers) juxtaposes delicate, sparkly textures with the gritty and the grotesque. As the winner of the 2022 NWMF Emerging Women Composers Competition, Haxo is currently at work on a commission for high chorus and chamber orchestra to be premiered during the 2022 National Women’s Music Festival. She was also awarded the 2019 International Alliance for Women in Music Libby Larsen Prize, the 2013 National Federation of Music Clubs Young Composers Award, and the 2013 IAWM Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Prize. She has received commissions from the May Festival Youth Chorus, Hub New Music, Quince Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds, amongst other ensembles. Recordings of her music have been released by New Focus Recordings, and her arts songs are published in the NewMusicShelf Anthologies of New Music.

A native of Massachusetts, Haxo earned her Ph.D. in Composition at the University of Oregon, where she worked as a Graduate Teaching Fellow in Music Theory. Her dissertation, a song cycle for alto and chamber orchestra entitled Pretty Pretty Princess vs. The Underworld, is a gothic, fragmentary fairytale retelling of the Orpheus myth on texts by poet Emily Corwin. Haxo also holds an M.M. in Composition from Butler University and a B.M. in Composition and Theory from The College of Wooster. Her teachers have included Robert Kyr, David Crumb, Michael Schelle, Frank Felice, Peter Mowrey, and Jack Gallagher. She previously taught private piano, theory, and composition lessons through the Butler Community Arts School in Indianapolis, and courses in composition and theory as an Adjunct Instructor of Music at Notre Dame College (Ohio).

Haxo is also an Academic Dean and faculty member for The Walden School Young Musicians Program in New Hampshire.