Great Hall Choral Arts Festival Concert - Feat. Guest Artist Jocelyn Hagen

Bethel's 7th Annual Great Hall Choral Arts Festival entitled, “Creating, Communicating, Cultivating,” welcomes Twin Cities based composer and performer Jocelyn Hagen. The festival culminates with an evening concert featuring individual performances by participating high school choirs and the Bethel Choir directed by Dr. Merrin Guice Gill. Selections composed by Hagen will be performed by each ensemble and the program will conclude with a joint work performed by all the choirs conducted by the composer.

Jocelyn Hagen

Jocelyn Hagen composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul). She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, opera, and publishing. Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work. The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber, and choral. Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color, and deeply heartfelt. In 2019 and 2020, choirs and orchestras across the country are premiering her multimedia symphony The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci that includes video projections created by a team of visual artists, highlighting da Vinci’s spectacular drawings, inventions, and texts. 

Hagen describes her process of composing for choir, orchestra and film simultaneously in a Tedx Talk given at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, now available on YouTube. Hagen’s commissions include Conspirare, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, Voces8, the International Federation of Choral Music, the American Choral Directors Association of Minnesota, Georgia, Connecticut, and Texas, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, Cantus, the Boston Brass, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Olaf Band, among many others. Her work is independently published through JH Music, as well as through Graphite Publishing, G. Schirmer, EC Schirmer, Fred Bock Music Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Boosey and Hawkes.

Hagen's full bio can be found on her website.