About Clarice Assad
2026 Biography
Grammy Award–nominated composer, pianist, vocalist, and educator Clarice Assad, based in Chicago, is one of the most compelling and versatile creative voices in contemporary music — a Brazilian-American artist celebrated for her evocative colors, rich textures, and fearless range across classical, world, jazz, and pop idioms.
“she energetically bends music to her will and reshapes it with fascinating results.”
– Jazz Improv Magazine
What motivates Clarice Assad? What drives her passion and creativity? Writing and playing music that inspires and encourages audiences’ imaginations to break free of often self-imposed constraints is just the beginning. She endeavors to harness the incredible and intangible power of music to connect people and transform lives through original works, commissions, and education programs that give voice to everything from the impact of climate change on the natural world to issues of social justice, gender equity, and the empowerment of young voices.
Assad’s recent work reflects a growing focus on theatrical, technology-driven concert experience. In February 2026, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her the Andrew Imbrie Award in Music, recognizing a mid-career composer of demonstrated artistic merit. The previous year, she received the 2025 Meier Achievement Award from the Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Charitable Foundation for the Arts, honoring Chicago-area artists who push the artistic envelope, and delivered the Kageyama-Hunt Global Speaker Series address at Belmont Hill School on the transformative power of music and creative life. In March 2026, her new string quartet NEXUS received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, performed by the Takács Quartet — praised by the New York Classical Review and featured in The Strad under the headline “Let’s Clarice It Up” for the way it guides four players through a dramatic arc of individuality, collision, and dissolution.
This theatrical sensibility runs through her recent commissions: KONTROL, a theatrical orchestral work for orchestra, solo violin, and presenter; “The Evolution of AI” (2024), commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Chicago Sinfonietta, and others; “Terra” (2024) for the Philadelphia Orchestra; and PIRACEMA (2025), written for Grupo Corpo’s 50th anniversary celebration. Additional commissions include the soundtrack for the documentary Devoti Tutti and a ballet score for choreographer Shannon Alvis; her earlier work Danças Nativas received a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Composition.
Assad’s interest in immersive, participatory music-making — heard in her 2019 orchestral work É Gol! and her education program VOXploration — remains part of her practice, giving voice to issues from climate change to social justice and gender equity even as her newer works move toward the theatrical and technological.
Her latest releases continue to garner critical acclaim. The album “Archetypes,” performed with her father Sérgio Assad and Chicago-based ensemble Third Coast Percussion, received 2022 Grammy nominations in both the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition categories. Her recent discography has expanded to include “Window To The World: A Tribute to Milton Nascimento” (Vectordisc Records, 2022), “Soul of Brazil” (Avie Records, 2023) with the Delgani Quartet, and “The Book of Spells” (Navona Records, 2024) with the Merian Ensemble.
The prolific composer has more than 130 works to her credit, including commissions for Carnegie Hall, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, ROCO, LA Philharmonic, Grand Teton Music Festival, Santa Rosa Symphony, Metropolis Ensemble, the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, and the La Jolla Music Festival, among many others.
She currently holds positions as Composer-Educator in Residence with the Allentown Symphony Orchestra (2023-2027) and the Albany Symphony (2024-26), and recently concluded a residency with the University of Maryland. She has also held residencies with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Sandbox program (2023-2024), MIT (2022-23), and KMFA (2023).
Her compositions have been recorded by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and oboist Liang Wang, and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony, Queensland Symphony, and the Orquestra Sinfônica de São Paulo, among others. She has served as composer-in-residence for the Albany Symphony, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, New Century Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Her works are published in France (Editions Lemoine), Germany (Trekel), Brazil (Criadores do Brasil), and in the U.S. by Virtual Artists Collective Publishing (VACP), a company she co-founded with poet and philosopher Steve Schroeder.
As a performer, Assad has shared the stage with Bobby McFerrin, Anat Cohen, Paquito D’Rivera, Tom Harrell, Marilyn Mazur, and Mike Marshall, appearing at venues including The Netherlands’ Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall, Belgium’s Le Palais des Beaux-Arts, Le Casino de Paris, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the Caramoor International Jazz Festival.
The recording artist has released seven solo albums and appeared on or had her works performed on another 34, represented on Cedille Records, SONY Masterworks, Nonesuch, Adventure Music, Edge, Telarc, NSS Music, GHA, and CHANDOS.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Clarice Assad has lived in Brazil, France, and the United States, and is fluent in Portuguese, French, and English, singing in those languages as well as Spanish and Italian. One of the most widely performed Brazilian concert music composers of her generation, she is the recipient of an Aaron Copland Award, several ASCAP composition awards, a Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Van Lier Fellowship, the Franklin Honor Society Award, the Samuel Ostrowsky Humanities Award, the New Music Alive Partnership program by the League of American Orchestras, and a McKnight Visiting Composer Award. Assad holds a Bachelor of Music from Chicago’s Roosevelt University and a Master of Music from the University of Michigan School of Music, where she studied with Michael Daugherty, Susan Botti, and Evan Chambers.