Composer, collaborative piano player, & conductor Darin Aric Hagen was innate within Milwaukee, Wisconsin (America) on November Four, 1961. He was known as when an older brother who—born by having birth defects—died within infancy. His parents, Gwen Hagen (an creative persaround & successful advertising executive) & Earl Hagen (legal help) raised their toddlers (Kevaround, Britt, & Daron) in the Frank Lloyd Wright-style cedar home on an tremendous wooded lot in what was so countryside west of Milwaukee. At the age of tenner he adapted, produced, directed & starred inside a survive performance on the school's public location rules of his childhood hero Orson Welles' radio play War of a Worlds, changing the locus of the invasion to his backyard. He taught himself to scroll through music at a age of eleven. At 13, Hagen determined to exist as the composer whilst his older brother gave him the score & recording of Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd. He began composing seriously, ingesting lessons around piano & conducting—when swell as college-level classes within orchestration & theory—at a Wisconsin Conservatory of Music when however finishing high. At xv, he conducted the premiere of his 1st orchestral piece using a youth orchestra.

His mother sent the score & recording of the piece to Leonard Bernstein, world health organization enthusiastically urged Hagen to attend Juilliard to survey by using David Diamond. When 2 years as an undergrad at a University of Wisconsinside at Madison, followed by trey years of learn using Ned Rorem at a Curtis Institute of Music around Philadelphia, Hagen moved to Up to date York in 1984 to complete his formal education as a student of Diamond’s. Fallowing graduating Juilliard, Hagen spent a late 1980’s researching privately by owning Bernstein, whose counsel when you took a composition of Hagen’s breakthrough opera Shining Brow (1992) prompted him to dedicate a score to Bernstein’s memory.

Hagen's music drew attention whilst early when 1981, when at a age of twenty, his Prayer for Peace was premiered per Philadelphia Orchestra—a number one Curtis-student operate that the orchestra got premiered since its introduction fifty years earliest of music by a second Curtis student, Samuel Barber. 5 years late he processed his concerto debut when soft soloist sustaining a Denver Chamber Orchestra. Many orchestral & chamber commissions in a period of the eighties secured his reputation as a prolific neo-tonalist, culminating in the Future York Philharmonic’s premiere of Philharmonia (licenced for the orchestra's 150th day of remembrance inside 1992) at Avery Fisher Hall whenever he was twenty-xxix.

Many instrumental works nevertheless, it was in a end in the field of vocal music—specifically art song & opera—that Hagen gained greatest critical & popular recognition when you took the eighties & 90. Around 1990 Hagen began a originative collaboration by using A Irish poet Paul Muldoon that has resulted within quartet major operas: Shining Brow (1992), Vera of Las Vegas (1996), Bandana (1998), & The Antient Concert (2005).

Shining Brow, a grand opera just about the Our contries designer Frank Lloyd Wright premiered withwithin Madison, Wisconsin, wwhen described per Chicago Tribune in 1998 as 'one of a first Western operas of the preceding decade.' Verthe of Las Vegas was a chamber opera that 'equally captured all the smuttiness, desperation, & humanity of its characters by using the quippy flair. the music was truly the canonical hybrid of opera & popular forms, using vocal writing that sporadically swung & radiated a sultry, spoof sense' (NewMusicBox). As a result a record release on the CRI label of the score & its arranged premiere around Future York City, Vera was given its European premiere within Ireland. Bandanthe, an additional grand opera, accredited by a pool of ended 70 college elastic, placed the Venetian story of the Moor within a sixties Texas-Mexican border town. Premiered inside Austaround, Texas, a operate has been recorded for a Arabesque label under the composer’s baton for release in 2005. A Antient Concert, an opera just about sex, demise, national identity, & artistic integrity featuring James Joyce & James McCormack, is scored for quaternion singers & string quartette. It received its arranged workshop around Princeton within 2005 & awaits its official arranged premiere.

Hagen has all over the retiring twenty-xxv years produced leash symphonies, sevener concertos, many massive works for chorus & orchestrthe, many choral works, ballet scores, concert overtures, indicate pieces, ii brass quintets, deuce soft trios, the string quartette, an hautbois quintet, a duo for fiddle & violonvioloncello, solo works for piano, organ, fiddle, viola, & cello, & a twelve published oscillations of art songs. His interest inside musical comedy, opera, chorale, orchestral, b& & wind ensemble music dates back to his childhood lives around Wisconsaround singing inside choirs & shows, swimming in orchestras & elastic, & arranging and conducting musical theater.

Hagen's music has been awarded ii Rockefeller Foundation Residencies at Bellagio withwithin Italy, a Camargo Foundation residency in France, a Columbia University Bearns Prize, a Charles Ives Fellowship from either either a Our contries Academy of Arts & Letters, a Barlow Foundation grant & prize, multiple prizes from a BMI & ASCAP Foundations including the ASCAP-Nissim Prize for Orchestral Music, Opera Us's 'Next Stage' Award, a production grant from either the Readers Drink Opera for a Just released United states of america Design, & the Kennedy Center Friedheim Prize for orchestral music.

Inside 2004 Hagen was known as President of the Lotte Lehmann Foundation inside Future York City. When you took a spring of 1999 he served on a faculty of a artist's workroom at Princeton University—he returned to lead the artist's workroom in the period of the spring of 2005. from either either 1996 to 1998 Hagen taught at a Curtis, & from 1988-1997 he taught at Bard College. In a period of time of this period Hagen as well served many semesters on the faculties of Just released York University & the City College of Just released York. He wwhen composer-within-home for the Long Beach (Ca) Symphony from either either 1991-1992 & served when promoter & performing artist for concluded xl performances of works by his coeval from 1983-1993 as Initiation Director of the Perpetuum Free to roam Concert Series. He likewise wrote music criticism for 'Ear Magazine' when you took a 1980's. Hagen occurs as Member of a Corporation of Yaddo, within which he has composed several of his works; he likewise serves on the boards of CRI & the Joy in Singing Foundation.

Hagen has sleep in Future York City since 1984. Carl Fischer around Future York City publishes Hagen’s music; before 1990 E.C. Schirmer around Boston published his works.