bio(s)

Before graduating high-school Gregory Joseph Menillo’s large-scale orchestral tryptic, Metamorphose eines Holz Milbe, was premiered by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, for which he was the youngest composer to be awarded the De Ruyter Medal (Netherlands). His controversial opera, Straight Razor, on the sexual identity of thirteenth-century scholastic philosopher William of Ockham, was completed in his first year of his study at the Conservatoire de Paris with Pierre Boulez, and was premiered the following year at the Vienna State Opera under the direction of his teacher. After returning from Europe he attended Princeton University where, in addition to music, he studied comparative literature and classics, while continuing to produce many large-scale works for various ensembles including the Pulitzer-Prize winning Chronos Esti Mei (for the Juilliard String Quartet). He is currently completing a dual Ph.D. in composition and philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center under the tutelage of Jeff Nichols and Saul Kripke. His previous teachers have included Paul Grice, Milton Babbitt, Stephen Soundheim, and he has been repeatedly featured in Philip Glass’ perennial master classes at MASS MoCA. His music has been recorded by both Bridge Records and Naxos, and he is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Gregory Joseph Menillo is a composer and phlebotomist from New York. He completed his doctorate in ancient philosophy at the University of Phoenix, where his dissertation on the obscene in the ontology of Diogenes of Sinope earned high distinction. He studied the bandoneón at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria before devoting himself completely to composition. He has since been recognized for his “brittle yet luscious” works which seek to find the “transfiguration at the edge of silence” (Chatelaine Magazine).  He has published articles in both the Journal of Proteomics and JAMA, and his composition awards include the Otaka Prize (Japan) for his Bagatelle for mixed chorus and large orchestra and the Akil Koci Prize (Albania) for “срање,” a cycle of polkas inspired by the work of Serbian poet Darinka Jevrić. He teaches critical theory and aesthetics at Bard College, splitting his time between New York and Newfoundland, where he is a private fencing instructor.

After completing an MFA in theater and dance at Cornell University, Gregory Joseph Menillo spent two years traveling the greater Himalaya and Kathmandu regions studying Sanskrit and living among the Newar people. Upon completing his studies of Nyingma in Bhutan he shifted his focus to Western music composition and returned to the United States to pursue a career as a composer of concert music. His recent s/have, for violin and hydraulic pumps, has been hailed as “confusingly lucid” and “spacious” (Hudson Review of Books), and his expansive year-long choral work, millinnillinneia, is currently being undertaken by the S.D.G. Konzertstimmen at St. Jakob Kirche in Köthen under a generous grant from the Deutscher Kulturrat. Critics have called it “immense” (Hindawi). He is currently a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center and resides in the Hudson Valley where he devotes most of his time to metal-working and sustainable chicken-farming.