Jennifer moves between creative efforts as a composer and jazz vocalist. She currently studies with renowned avant-garde jazz vocalist, Jay Clayton. Jennifer’s dissertation examines composer/bandleader/bassist Charles Mingus’ reanimations of early jazz, legacies of vaudeville and minstrelsy and has published articles on Mingus in Jazz Perspectives and (Spring 2015) Black Music Research Journal. She studied composition with Donald Wheelock, Thea Musgrave, David Del Tredici and Tania León, and earned her doctorate in composition at the Graduate Center in New York. Her pocket opera, Dream President, was presented at New York City Opera’s VOX 2004. In 2008 she co-produced Opera After Hours, an evening of opera shorts, directed by internationally acclaimed Christopher Alden. Alden has also directed a staged reading of Griffith’s one-act “green” opera, Beautiful Creatures, produced by Stage|Time in 2011. Commissions include In E for the 2008 Festival Non Sequitur, featuring Newspeak, and The Reed (2010) for the Grace and Spiritus Chorale of Brooklyn. Moreover, Jennifer has written for new music ensembles Glass Farm and Cygnus, among others. Current projects include orchestrating Beautiful Creatures for full production (Nov-Dec 2015). jennifergriffith.com