Annika Socolofsky

ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY is a US composer and avant folk vocalist. Her music stems from the eruptive power and nuance of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral and operatic works to unaccompanied folk ballads. Annika writes extensively for her own voice with chamber ensemble, including composing a growing repertoire of “feminist rager-lullabies” titled Don’t say a word, which serves to confront centuries of damaging lessons taught to young children by retelling old lullaby texts for a new, queer era.

As a composer, Annika has collaborated with artists such as the Rochester Philharmonic, Albany Symphony, Dogs of Desire, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion, So Percussion, Möbius Percussion, Latitude 49, Music from Copland House, Contemporaneous, Emissary Quartet, Donald Sinta Quartet, and sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird.

Annika is a recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, The Cortona Prize, and a BMI Student Composer Award. She has been awarded fellowships to the Blackbird Creative Lab, Banff Centre for the Arts, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. Her research focuses on vocal technique and physiology in the music of Dolly Parton to create a pedagogical approach to composition that is inclusive of many vocal timbres, inflections, and techniques, evading the age-old false dichotomy of straight tone vs. bel canto vocal style. She is a doctoral candidate in composition at Princeton University. Annika plays a Norwegian hardanger d’amore fiddle made by Salve Håkedal.