Majel Connery is an unclassifiable artist who rarely says no to anything. Her music ranges from the guttural to the sublime, appearing in punk rock clubs at night and by day at major destinations from The Kennedy Center to The Kitchen.
A vocalist and composer, Connery combines Classical influences with electronic mentality. Her singing has been called “superb” by the New York Times and her composition “thoroughly Schubertian” by the Wall Street Journal.
Connery is the host and producer of A Music of Their Own, an interview podcast on women in music (CapRadio/NPR) and the Reverberations podcast for New Amsterdam Records. Her interest in radio began in 2019 after creating music for five episodes of Radiolab’s “Gonads” series.
As a composer, her work includes “The Rivers are Our Brothers," an environmental song cycle currently on tour with Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer. She has also released multiple albums with composer-collective Oracle Hysterical, and the double EP Bear Mountain/Childworld with her art-rock duo Sky Creature.
In academia, Connery has held a variety of artist residencies and professorships at institutions including Princeton, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Wellesley College, and the University of California Berkeley. From 2007-2018, she co-founded and ran the experimental opera company, Opera Cabal, a think tank for the conjunction of creative and academic work on opera. Opera Cabal’s production of ATTHIS at The Kitchen was called “mesmerizing” by the New York Times.
Connery holds an M.A/Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and musicology, respectively, from the University of Chicago and an A.B. in music from Princeton University. She lives part-time in Catskill, NY, and part-time in the world at large.
Majel was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2014 – she was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.