American composer Aaron Zigman is a master of multiple genres. A Pulitzer Prize finalist whose concert music is championed by leading artists and orchestras worldwide, he is also a stalwart of popular song and one of today’s preeminent film and television composers, whose honors include an Emmy Award.

Zigman’s concert output encompasses operatic, orchestral, chamber, and vocal music. Émigré (2023), his oratorio for soloists, choir, and orchestra, receives its European premiere from Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in fall 2024. This follows the work’s world and U.S. premieres last season from the co-commissioning Shanghai Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic respectively, with a Chinese and American cast led by conductor Long Yu in a semi-staged production by Mary Birnbaum. Set to a libretto by Mark Campbell, with additional lyrics by Brock Walsh, the 90-minute work tells the story of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai to escape the Holocaust. A recording of its Shanghai world premiere was released this past June by Deutsche Grammophon, drawing a five-star review from BBC Music magazine, and a film of the U.S. premiere comes to PBS TV’s “Great Performances” series in fall 2024.

As a longtime devotee of the tango, Zigman pays tribute to the Argentinean form in his award-winning piano concerto, Tango Manos (2019), a co-commission of the Beijing Music Festival, Radio France, and San Francisco Symphony. The concerto’s critically acclaimed world and U.S. premiere performances featured its dedicatee, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, with the China Philharmonic under Long Yu and the San Francisco Symphony under Fabien Gabel. Zigman’s other orchestral works include his tone poem Rabin: An Orchestral Work in Five Movements (1994), written in memory of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan premiered Zigman’s Rhapsody for cello and piano at California’s La Jolla Music Society in 2021. The composer’s earlier chamber works include No Strings Attached (2007), a sextet for French horn player Brian O’Connor; Vis Vitae (2006) for mixed octet, as featured at the third annual Beverly Hills International Music Festival; and Impressions (2004), a suite for wind ensemble that was premiered by French horn player Richard Todd and members of the USC Symphony Orchestra. Zigman’s vocal works include a setting of Shir L'Shalom, two Ave Maria vocalises, and La Donna in Viola for soprano soloists and chorus, which is set to an Italian translation of a poem by American feminist playwright Ntozake Shange.

 Zigman has firmly established himself as one of Hollywood’s go-to composers. His film career launched in 2000, when director Nick Cassavetes heard a performance of Rabin by the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. Zigman and Cassavetes went on to collaborate on six films, including the romantic cult classic The Notebook, for which the composer’s score sold a record number of albums. Working with top studios and directors, he has scored more than 60 Hollywood motion pictures to date, including such substantial box-office hits as Bridge to Terabithia, The Proposal, For Colored Girls, The Company Men, Wakefield, and the Sex and the City franchise. Similarly distinguished in television, he has penned songs for shows including the popular series Fame and the Showtime TV movie Crown Heights, for which his setting of the Hebrew peace prayer “Sim Shalom” received an Emmy Award. He recently scored American Dream/American Knightmare, Antoine Fuqua’s acclaimed Suge Knight documentary for Showtime, and is currently working on the music for Truth & Conviction, a new four-part limited series from Kaleidoscope Pictures. Featuring his original score, The Six Triple Eight, Tyler Perry’s new World War II drama starring Kerry Washington as commander of the U.S. Women’s Army Corps’ all-Black battalion, is scheduled for both theatrical and Netflix release in December 2024.

It was in popular song that Zigman first embarked on his career. A student of renowned MGM composer and orchestrator George Bassman, he signed a song-writing contract with music publishing giant Almo Irving while still in college. Subsequently working for industry legend Clive Davis, Zigman went on to write, arrange, and produce more than 50 hit albums for some of the world’s foremost performing and recording artists, including Christina Aguilera, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Phil Collins, Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, John Legend, Seal, Carly Simon, Sting, The Four Tops, Tina Turner, and Dionne Warwick.

Zigman has accrued numerous honors, including the 2005 Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song, two International Film Music Critics’ Award nominations, and twelve BMI Film & TV Awards. A top prize-winner at the 2021 American Prize in Orchestral Composition, his Tango Manos concerto was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music.