Profile
MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN is a GRAMMY®-nominated composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.
A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for such organizations as the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Beth Morrison Projects/OPERA America, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the Houston Symphony, American Composers Forum, Roomful of Teeth, WQXR, REDSHIFT, Experiments in Opera, Helen Simoneau Danse, the Nouveau Classical Project, Music of Remembrance, Friction Quartet, Ensemble Oktoplus, and the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble among others. Her work has been performed internationally at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, the Barbican Centre, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Millennium Park, Benaroya Hall, Prototype Festival, the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Cabrillo Festival, SF Jazz, Big Ears Festival, 21C Music Festival, and Cal Performances.
Her opera Adoration, adapted from Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film, was commissioned, developed, produced, and premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in New York City before receiving its West Coast premiere at LA Opera to rave reviews. The world premiere recording was nominated for a 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Opera Recording, making history as the first opera by an Armenian composer in the category. Kouyoumdjian’s debut portrait album, WITNESS with the Kronos Quartet, was released through Phenotypic Recordings in 2025 and was called “powerful, poignant” by Gramophone and “gorgeous, brutal, and awe-stricken” by FLOOD Magazine. In May 2025, her Pulitzer-nominated music-documentary, Paper Pianos, commissioned by Alarm Will Sound, was performed at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Paper Pianos originally premiered in 2023 at EMPAC.
Kouyoumdjian’s residencies include those with EMPAC, Buffalo String Works, Alarm Will Sound/The Mizzou International Composers Festival, Roulette/The Jerome Foundation, Montalvo Arts Center, and Exploring the Metropolis. Her music has been described as “eloquently scripted" and "emotionally wracking” by The New York Times and as "politically fearless" and "the most harrowing moments on stage at any New York performance" by New York Music Daily. In her work as a composer, orchestrator, and music editor for film, she has collaborated on a diverse array of motion pictures, including writing the original score for the documentary An Act of Worship (Capital K Pictures and PBS’s POV Docs) and orchestrating the soundtrack to The Place Beyond the Pines (Focus Features).
Kouyoumdjian holds a D.M.A. and M.A. in composition from Columbia University, where she studied primarily with Zosha Di Castri, Georg Friedrich Haas, Fred Lerdahl, and George Lewis; an M.A. in Scoring for Film & Multimedia from New York University; and a B.A. in Music Composition from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Anthony Davis, Steven Schick, and Chinary Ung. Dedicated to new music advocacy, Kouyoumdjian is a Co-Founder of the annual new music conference New Music Gathering, served as the founding Executive Director of contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant, and served as Co-Artistic Director of Alaska's new music festival Wild Shore New Music. As an avid educator, Kouyoumdjian is the Associate Professor of Composition for Collaborative Media at Mannes School of Music at The New School; she has previously been on faculty at Columbia University, the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Brooklyn College's Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, and the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program. Kouyoumdjian is proud to have her music published by Schott's PSNY and is based in New York. www.marykouyoumdjian.com