Composer Raymond J. Lustig’s ever-evolving work ranges from symphonic, to chamber, technological, multimedia, and, most lately, theatrical. Commissions, performances, and support have come from Grand Rapids Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, Budapest Operetta Theater, the Bartok Plusz Opera Festival, American Opera Projects, Town Hall Seattle, The Academy (A Program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute), Metropolis Ensemble, TENET Vocal Ensemble, Copland House, LyricFest, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, tenor Nicholas Phan, cellist Joshua Roman’s Town Music, Duo Noire, Flutronix, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute, American Music Center’s Live Music for Dance Project, Da Capo Chamber Players, Avian Music, Orchestra Insonica, the Juilliard Orchestra, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Bowling Green Philharmonia, Blind Ear, Opera Grows in Brooklyn, Opera on Tap, counter)induction, the Norfolk Festival, the St. Louis Guitar Festival, New York Festival of Song, the Caramoor Music Festival, the Juilliard Beyond the Machine Festival, the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, and numerous colleges and universities worldwide. He has served as Composer in Residence with the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, the Imagine Science Film Festival, and Copland House’s Compose Yourself project.

Awards include the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Rudolf Nissim Prize for his orchestral work UNSTUCK, and the Aaron Copland Award from Copland House. His teachers have included John Corigliano, Robert Beaser, Samuel Adler, Sebastian Currier, Jonathan Kramer, Derek Bermel, Philip Lasser, Pia Gilbert, Conrad Cummings, and Shirish Korde.

An active blogger-in-music, Lustig’s regular micro-composition series #composagrams has spawned a novel genre and pioneered use of social media feeds as a new 21st-century “concert hall”—an artistic space with its own creative benefits and boundaries.  He was invited by TEDx to speak about his practice of looking to the constraints for his new inspirations.

Born in Tokyo and raised in Queens, New York, Lustig received his B.A. from Holy Cross College, where he pursued his interests in music and the sciences. Before coming to Juilliard to complete his MM and DMA degrees in composition, Lustig was a published researcher in molecular biology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Columbia University.  As a composer, he remains deeply inspired by science, nature, and the mind.  He lives in New York and is a member of the composition faculty in the Juilliard School’s Evening Division.