Inspired by the renegade eloquence of the American vernacular, the music of composer Vincent Calianno “blurs the boundaries between fine art and popular culture” (VICE), curiously investigating “peculiar and transfixing” (WSJ) musical possibilities through new and obsolescent technologies. His musical catalogue for the concert hall, film, and theatre explores the interplay between live instruments, electronics, and visual media.

Calianno’s concert work has been commissioned and performed internationally by leading ensembles including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, JACK Quartet, Thalea String Quartet, Nouveau Classical Project, Jennifer Koh, John Pickford Richards, Kivie Cahn-Lipman, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Artifact Dance Project, and others. 

His awards include the ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize (The Facts and Dreams of the World According to Michael Jackson), the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Award (A History of the String Quartet in its Natural Habitat), the Sarah Award for best new podcast (Voices of the Revolution), the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute (against COLORADO), and the Howard Hanson Prize (Beckett). In addition, he was an Alan Menken Fellow, and Banff Centre Fellow. In addition, his music appears on the 2022 Grammy-winning album Alone Together.

In addition to composing for the concert hall, has an active career in scoring for film and new media. His commercial credits include music for numerous short and feature-length films, industrials, and dramatic podcasts. His interest in scoring for early cinema has led him to compose new scores for La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari, and Sherlock Jr.

In 2019, Calianno co-founded Two Trains with choreographer Claire Hancock. Two Trains is a hybrid music-theatre-dance project focused on abstract and inventive storytelling through the combined expressions of imagery and sound. Their first project, L’Astronome, is a nine-part opera that combines movement, text, and sound through the medium of cinema, and is set to premiere next season.

Calianno holds degrees in composition from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music, University of Illinois, and New York University. His teachers have included Livingston Gearhart, John Luther Adams, Lewis Nielson, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Zack Browning, and Mark Suozzo. He currently teaches composition at the University of Arizona.