Toronto composer James Rolfe has been commissioned and performed by ensembles, orchestras, choirs, theatres, and opera companies in Canada, the USA, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the K. M. Hunter Music Award, the Louis Applebaum Composers Award, the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, Choral Canada’s Outstanding Choral Work Award, and the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize. He holds composition degrees from Princeton University and from the University of Toronto, where he now serves as a composition instructor. He also works as a composer mentor.
Rolfe’s operas have been performed in Toronto, Halifax, Vancouver, Banff, Edmonton, and New York. Beatrice Chancy (1998, with librettist George Elliott Clarke) played to sold-out houses and rave reviews; The Overcoat (2018, with librettist and director Morris Panych) was premiered by Tapestry Opera with Canadian Stage and Vancouver Opera, and nominated for 10 Dora Awards. Among his other collaborators are writers André Alexis, Anna Chatterton, Luke Hathaway, Steven Heighton, Camyar Chai, Alex Poch-Goldin, Dennis Lee, and Sophie Herxheimer, and choreographer James Kudelka. His solo CDs raW (2011) and Breathe (2017, nominated for a JUNO Award) are available on Centrediscs; Wound Turned to Light (2023, a songbook setting contemporary Canadian poets) is available on Redshift Records.
