Jake Heggie, who has written some of the world’s most performed operas by any living composer, is receiving double honors in the coming year.
The San Francisco resident, whose career went into high gear with the San Francisco Opera premiere of his Dead Man Walking in 2000, has been named Musical America’s Composer of the Year for 2025, and in March, he will be inducted into Opera America’s Opera Hall of Fame.
Heggie is described by Musical America as “that rare phenomenon, a contemporary composer whose operas ... have become a part of the canon. What’s more, audiences enjoy his dramatically astute, lyrical, and emotionally rewarding works. A singer’s composer, Heggie often writes for his favorite voices, just one of the weapons in his musical armory.”
“I am truly overwhelmed by all the honors — deeply touched and a bit stunned,” Heggie told SF Classical Voice. “I’m just grateful to have this amazing career doing something I love so much ... and that it is appreciated in this way is truly unexpected, moving, and fills me with gratitude.”
SFCV reached Heggie, who is constantly traveling around the world to attend productions of his works, in Texas. “I have the premiere of a monodrama, EARTH 2.0, with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra this weekend, featuring a libretto by Bay Area writer Anita Amirrezvani, conducted by Robert Spano, and starring the astounding countertenor Key’mon Murrah.”
Always engaged in several projects simultaneously, Heggie says he is also “writing new songs to texts by Margaret Atwood and Taylor Mac and getting ready for a big spring season, with performances of Songs for Murdered Sisters [text by Atwood] at Carnegie Hall with The Philadelphia Orchestra and baritone Joshua Hopkins and then Moby-Dick at the [Metropolitan Opera] the entire month of March.”
Among the many organizations with which Heggie has been collaborating for years is Seattle-based Music of Remembrance, which greeted the awards by extolling the composer’s “creative brilliance and loyal friendship over a span of almost two decades. Beginning in 2007 with For a Look or a Touch, the first [opera] ever about the Nazi persecution of gay people, Jake and librettist Gene Scheer have brought us five pathbreaking new works that have gone on to touch the hearts of people around the world.
“In his life and his music, Jake embodies a passionate commitment to the best of humanity. We’re profoundly grateful and offer our heartfelt congratulations.”
Returning to SF Opera, Heggie also wrote If I Were You in 2019 for the Merola Opera Program’s young artists. In addition, his collaborations with mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and other singers have produced many songs that have become part of the standard repertoire.
