Marcos Balter

Marcos Balter’s musical language embodies his belief that a pluralist society should foster artistic fluidity, bridging and intertwining diverse perspectives. A prolific composer, Balter’s catalog includes orchestral works, vocal and instrumental chamber music, multimedia and interdisciplinary projects, collaborations with popular musicians, and compositions for children and community engagement. Critics have described his music as “a virtuosic equilibrium of colliding particles” (The Boston Globe) through “a fiercely imaginative palette of instrumental and vocal sounds” (The Chicago Tribune). 

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Balter began his musical training at the Conservatório Musical Heitor Villa-Lobos at age five, enrolling at the Conservatório Brasileiro de Música at age eleven. In his late teens, he studied privately with composer Almeida Prado before moving to the United States to further his education. As a doctoral student at Northwestern University, he became a key figure within a dynamic community of Chicago-based artists exploring innovative and collaborative approaches to music creation, developing close ties with the newly formed International Contemporary Ensemble and co-founding Ensemble Dal Niente. Today, his music is championed by leading ensembles including the JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, yMusic, The Crossing, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Ensemble intercontemporain at prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, and Wigmore Hall. Highlights in 2025 include appearances at the Ojai, TIME:SPANS, and Darmstädter Ferienkurse festivals, and performances by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Orquestra do Estado de São Paulo, and the New York New Music Ensemble. 

Balter has received numerous awards and honors, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award, the Koussevitzky Foundation/Library of Congress Award, the Fromm Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was a Leonard Bernstein Fellow in 2005. 

As a queer Afro-Brazilian artist, Balter is committed to expanding the cultural discourse on music and representation in the arts through post-colonial lenses. His New York Times essay, His Name is Joseph Boulogne, Not ‘Black Mozart,’ examines the systemic erasure of Black composers from Western music history. 

He is currently the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University. Previously, he taught at the University of California, San Diego; Montclair State University; and Columbia College Chicago, and held visiting professorships at the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, and the University of Pittsburgh. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Adrian Hills, a senior official at the United Nations.