CLINT JOSEPH BORZONI is an award-winning composer of Ecuadorian and Italian descent. His highly original yet lyrical music [and] natural gift for melody and harmonic structure (The Huffington Post) and sweeping melodies and emotional and dramatic range (Opera News) has resulted in international performances and premieres.
He has collaborated with librettist John de los Santos on the opera “When Adonis Calls.” The lyrical opera (fashioned entirely from the poetry of Gavin Geoffrey Dillard), was selected for inclusion by Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers and Opera America’s New Works Forum. The world premiere at the Asheville Lyric Opera sold out and was followed by a collaborative new production in Chicago between Thompson Street Opera and Pride Films & Plays.
Clint’s second collaboration with de los Santos, The Copper Queen, won the top prize for Arizona Opera’s commission program, Arizona SPARK. Excerpts were performed at the American Lyric Theater’s Alumni concert, with a third sold-out workshop at Opera America. The opera was premiered in 2021 as an award-winning feature film.
Clint and John developed their third opera, The Christmas Spider, with The American Opera Project. The opera was recently premiered by Opera Louisiane and subsequently produced by Ovation West and Marble City Opera. Clint’s other operatic works include “Margot Alone in the Light,” an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s story “All Summer in a Day” (premiered by operamission and subsequently produced by Opera On Tap); and “Antinous and Hadrian” (commissioned by operamission). The orchestra suite based on “Antinous and Hadrian” won the Queer Urban Orchestra’s 2018 composition competition and was recently performed by the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Borzoni has composed songs and song cycles for many leading vocalists. He won BARIHUNKS Best New Song (2015), Best New Solo Work for Baritone (2017), operamission’s cabaret song competition, and was a prize winner of Sparks & Wiry Cries Second and Fourth annual NYC songSLAM. Borzoni’s additional honors include the Morton Feldman Award, the Boston Metro Opera Festival Award, an artist residency with the American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program (2009), an artist residency with The American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice Program (2010), and an associate producer credit for Patricia Racette’s CD “Diva on Detour”.
In addition to composing opera, art song, and concert music, his musical “My Life as a Bald Soprano” received an Off-Broadway run at the Midtown International Theater Festival. Borzoni has also scored three films for the production company JR VISION, which were featured at the Take Two Film Festival, the Miami Short Film Festival, SeriesFest, NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, and Anthology Film Archives. His music has been presented by Minnesota Opera, the Merola Opera Program, the Glimmerglass Festival, the Bay View Music Festival, the Wintergreen Festival, the Summer Street Festival, St Martin-in-the-Fields, the U.S. embassy in Switzerland, La MaMA, Symphony Space, Opera Grows in Brooklyn, the New York Youth Symphony, the Walt Whitman Project, the Jacobs School of Music, the Guildhall School of Music, the Mannes School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and many more venues and universities.
He has recently been commissioned by Arizona Opera, the Delaware Art Museum, the Big Apple Corps Symphonic Band, and Barihunks. He studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici at the City University of New York where he received an MA in Music Composition. He recently finished a new oratorio, “The Wife of Lot,” which was commissioned by the Gavin Dillard Poetry Library & Archive and made possible by a generous donation from Steven J. Schimmel. “The Wife of Lot” is part of the collection of the Senator John Heinz History Center, in association with the Smithsonian Institution.
He recently finished his seventh opera, “In Love Alone”, with librettist Judith G. Wolf. From 2016-2020, he was the Resident Composer for Musica Marin, a nonprofit organization that presents, supports and inspires classical music throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Clint is currently working on his eighth opera, La Callas, with librettist Elizabeth Coppinger. La Callas is a new opera that celebrates the life of Maria Callas. The aria from the opera, “My Child”, was premiered as part of Teatro Grattacielo’s production of The 10 Faces of Maria Callas.