James Rolfe

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 is a composition instructor at the University of Toronto, and frequently 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. His collaborators include 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 include raW (2011) and Breathe (2017, nominated for a JUNO Award) on Centrediscs, and Wound Turned to Light (2023, a songbook setting contemporary Canadian poets) on Redshift Records.