Melissa Dunphy

Melissa Dunphy (born 1980) is an Australian-American composer best known for her vocal, political, and theatrical music. Born in Australia and raised in an immigrant family, Dunphy herself immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has since become an award‐winning and acclaimed composer.

She first came to national attention when her large‐scale work the Gonzales Cantata, a 40-minute choral piece in Baroque style that sets the text of the parts of the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy hearings in which former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified. It was featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, National Review, Fox News, and on the Rachel Maddow Show in 2009; Maddow described it as "probably the coolest thing you've ever seen on this show." Dunphy completed her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 and is currently on the composition faculty at Rutgers University.

Early life Born in Brisbane, Australia, Dunphy was raised in an immigrant household. Dunphy's father was a Greek immigrant, and her mother was a refugee who fled from China to evade the Cultural Revolution. Dunphy first began piano lessons at age 3. Her mother introduced her to music after reading that "kids who studied classical music are better at math." Dunphy grew up playing violin and viola in addition to singing in choirs.

After graduating high school, Dunphy moved to Sydney to attend medical school, which she left after 9 months, and explored careers in corporate law, television production, and live theater. After immigrating to the United States in 2003, Dunphy was asked to write music at the last minute for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that she was acting in, which helped her discover her love of composing and choose to pursue it professionally.

Choral works A Gritty Resolution In 2024, Melissa Dunphy was commissioned by the local a cappella group PhilHarmonia to write a composition for its 10th anniversary show. The only stipulation was that it had to be about Philadelphia.Although Dunphy, a Philadelphia enthusiast, was nearing her deadline with no ideas, inspiration struck as she glanced at her 2020 protest sign featuring Gritty, one of the city's sports mascots. The sign, which read "F--- around and find out", sparked the idea to write a song about Gritty.

Dunphy chose to set the 2018 City Council resolution welcoming Gritty as the mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers. The result was "A Gritty Resolution", likely the first choral work based on a city's resolution honoring a sports mascot, generating significant interest from choirs nationwide.

PhilHarmonia premiered "A Gritty Resolution" along with two other commissioned pieces at its free 10th anniversary concert, in the summer of 2024. The event, held at the Settlement Music School's Germantown branch, featured various works celebrating Philadelphia, including an a cappella rendition of the 6ABC Action News theme song.

"We really don't have hockey in Australia, where I'm originally from. Ice skating isn't a 'thing' there. But Gritty is the best thing ever. I would die for Gritty."

N-400 Erasure Songs

Dunphy was commissioned by Cantus, an eight-member male vocal ensemble, in 2021 to write a piece on the subject of immigration. She asked two poets, Nina Pollari and Laurel Chen, to black out text on the Form N-400 to create Erasure poetry which she then set to music.

The work consists of three movements and has been described as "powerful", and "haunting and mournful". An SATB arrangement was subsequently commissioned by the South Bend Chamber Singers, and the work has notably been performed by Boston Choral Ensemble, Seattle Pro Musica, Quincy Civic Music Association, and numerous times by Cantus.

Operatic works

Alice Tierney In 2020, Dunphy was commissioned by the Oberlin Opera Commissioning Program to develop her opera Alice Tierney with librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger. She was the recipient of a 2020 Discovery Grant from Opera America, funding three workshops with Oberlin Conservatory students that took place while the work was created. Ultimately, the opera explores questions of how stories change depending on who is telling the story – how our own assumptions, motivations, and bias influence the way we understand a narrative.

Alice Tierney is influenced by a variety of musical styles: Dunphy describes her music as a mix of "pop music from the two eras, the 1880s and 2023".

Since the premier, the Dunphy's have continued to dig in and around their property, finding large amounts of historic artifacts, piecing together broken pieces into nearly intact bowls.

Gonzales Cantata Conceived while Dunphy was at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, the cantata has a libretto taken entirely from the transcript of the Gonzales hearings, which Dunphy found dramatic. Because Dunphy wished to highlight the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee was made up entirely of men, with the exception of Dianne Feinstein – and also because there are more female opera singers than male – she reversed the genders and cast sopranos as Gonzales and as the male senators. Orrin Hatch is an alto, because he was more sympathetic to Gonzales and it needed "a different vibe"; Feinstein is a male tenor. The cantata includes an aria for Gonzales called "I Don't Recall", in which the soprano sings the title phrase 72 times, the same number of times that Gonzales said it in the hearings. Dunphy reports that she asked John Ashcroft for permission to arrange his song "Let the Eagle Soar" as a "companion piece", but he turned her down on grounds of "artistic differences". other reviewers mentioned its similarity to Handelian opera or to P.D.Q. Bach,

The work premiered at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September 2009. It was staged as a cantata or oratorio; characters wore red or blue dresses depending on party affiliation, with tiaras as well as sashes bearing their names.

Everything for Dawn Dunphy was one of 10 commissioned composers for the video opera series Everything for Dawn, commissioned by Experiments in Opera and presented by All Arts. The series takes place in suburban Detroit and tells the story of college-aged Dawn and her father, Mac, who has recently taken his own life. Dawn and her mother discover a box of Mac's paintings, which attract national attention after being presented in a local gallery, and Dawn grapples with the fact that her personal tragedy is being seen by the public. Dunphy drew upon her own experiences with a mentally ill parent to create the episode, mentioning specific details like the smell of mashed potatoes, and capturing the anticipation, fear, and awkwardness that one experiences as they visit a hospitalized family member for the first time. American Dreamers (2022) - choral work set to a collection of 5 texts from American writers reflecting on their experiences immigrating to the U.S. when they were children. The piece was commissioned by PhilHarmonia, a Philadelphia-based community choir led by Mitos Andaya Hart. Alice Tierney (2023) - an "archeology opera" based on Dunphy's experiences excavating privy sites near her Philadelphia home. The piece was commissioned and premiered the Oberlin Opera Theater.

Awards and honors Dunphy has received awards from NATS Art Song Composition which won first place for her song cycle Tesla's Pigeon, and choral work What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? which won the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Competition and has been performed nationally by ensembles including Chanticleer and Cantus. In 2024, Dunphy was awarded and Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. She was the recipient of a 2020 Opera America Discovery Grant for Alice Tierney, an opera commissioned by Oberlin Conservatory which premiered in 2023 at Oberlin and Opera Columbus.

Dunphy has been a composer in residence with the Immaculata Symphony Orchestra since 2010. She also previously worked with Volti Choral Arts Lab from 2013 to 2014, Volti Choral Institute in 2016, and the Saint Louis Chamber Chorus from 2015 to 2018. 2020: Opera America Discovery Grant, Alice Tierney, Oberlin Conservatory Opera 2019: West Chester University Foundation, Distinguished Alumna Award 2019: Barrymore Award nomination: Outstanding Sound Design, Hype Man: A Break Beat Play, InterAct Theatre Company 2019: Barrymore Award nomination: Outstanding Original Music, Among the Dead, Theatre Exile 2019: Winner – Calliope's Call Art Song and Vocal Chamber Music Call for Scores, Come, My Tan-Faced Children 2017: Honorable Mention – RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Competition, O Oriens 2015: Honorable Mention – Boston Choral Ensemble Commission Competition, Together 2014: Winner – Chicago Ensemble Discover America VIII, Tesla's Pigeon 2014: Semi-finalist – Apollo Chamber Players 2014 International Commissioning Contest, Captain Samuels Speaks to the Sea! 2013: Boston Metro Opera Merit Award, Tesla's Pigeon 2013: Winner – The American Prize in Composition: Chamber Music Student category, Tesla's Pigeon 2012: Winner – National Association of Teachers of Singing Art Song Composition Award, Tesla's Pigeon 2012: Tesla Science Foundation "Spirit of Tesla" Award, Tesla's Pigeon 2011: University of Pennsylvania Helen L. Weiss Music Prize, Tesla's Pigeon 2010: Finalist – National Opera Association Chamber Opera Competition, The Gonzales Cantata 2010: Winner – Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition, What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach? 2009: Highly Commended – ASCAP/Lotte Lehmann Foundation Art Song Competition, Black Thunder

Sound Design Dunphy was nominated for two 2018–2019 Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre: one for Hype Man: A Break Beat Play at Interact Theater Company (Award for Outstanding Sound Design), and the second for Among the Dead at Theatre Exile (Outstanding Original Music).

Acting Dunphy is also a stage actress. She has played a number of Shakespearean roles for theatre festivals and companies in Pennsylvania, where she has resided since 2003. The Philadelphia Inquirer called her "unquestionably the city's leading Shakespeare ingenue" for her performance as Ophelia in the Lantern Theater Company's Hamlet.