About

The music of award-winning composer and librettist Luna Pearl Woolf has been called “brilliant … profoundly moving” (Opera Going Toronto), praised for its “psychological nuances and emotional depth” (NY Times) and described as “gorgeous, sometimes startling in its layering and detail” (The Whole Note). 

With commissions for large-scale dramatic works from New York’s Perelman Performing Arts Center, Tapestry Opera and Washington National Opera, among others, Woolf is known for her contributions to new opera, garnering a 2021 GRAMMY Award nomination for the composer-portrait album, LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood.

Woolf’s opera Jacqueline, about legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré, with libretto by Royce Vavrek and commissioned by Tapestry Opera, was hailed as an “extraordinary piece, one that deserves an unquestioned place in the 21st-century canon” (The Globe and Mail). The opera has been remounted across the US and Canada, including in San Francisco, Portland, and Toronto.

The oratorio Number Our Days, with concept and libretto by David Van Taylor, was commissioned by PAC NYC for its inaugural season, receiving a thunderous response: “extraordinary, completely original…new and electrifying,” “death-affirming, life-inciting,” “elegiac, funny, haunting…poetic, and utterly unique.”

Canada’s CBC Music named the 2022 JUNO award-nominated recording Vagues et Ombres, including Woolf’s work, Contact, as their #1 Classical Album of the Year.

As both librettist and composer, Woolf is creating an opera based on John Irving’s most widely translated and beloved novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. The project is commissioned by Musique 3 Femmes and developed in collaboration with Pacific Opera Victoria.

Woolf is Director of Creative Development at M3F, and Director of the Opera Creation Forum, co-produced by M3F and Opéra de Montréal. She guest teaches at institutions such as the National Theatre School of Canada and McGill University. She is co-founder of Oxingale Productions, a ground-breaking record label and music publisher supporting new music by lyrical and innovative contemporary composers.

A dual Canadian and American citizen, Woolf lives in Montréal, Quebec.

For a downloadable copy of this bio, visit the Media Kit page.