Connor Elias Way
Composer

Bio

Connor Elias Way (b. 1991) is a composer whose music explores resonance through carefully wrought networks of heterophonic counterpoint and a spectrally-informed approach to sonority and timbre. His music has been performed by groups such as the Minnesota Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, Aizuri Quartet, Yarn/Wire, Contemporaneous, Sō Percussion, Chamber Cartel, Terminus Ensemble, Modern Medieval, Dither, Omnibus Ensemble, Now Hear This, Occasional Symphony, Arx Duo, Bergamot Quartet, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, and at the Charleston Symphony’s Magnetic South series.

Connor holds a B.Mus. in Composition (summa cum laude) from Georgia State University and an M.M. in Composition from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University where he was presented with the Gustav Klemm Award in Composition. He is currently a PhD candidate at Princeton University.

photo credit: Ji Su Jung

Connor Elias Way (b. 1991, Stone Mountain, GA) is a composer living in Brooklyn, NY. He creates music that blurs individual voices into luminous harmonic clouds, shifting between fragile unisons and resonant pillars of sound. Drawing on his background as an ambient musician, his work invites listeners into the liminal spaces between polyphony and sound mass, harmony and timbre, cacophony and ethereality.

His music has been programmed and performed by ensembles including Alarm Will Sound, Minnesota Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Aizuri Quartet, Contemporaneous, So Percussion, Yarn/wire, Gallicantus, Bergamot Quartet, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Occasional Symphony, Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Dither, Arx Duo, Chamber Cartel, and Modern Medieval, among others. He has been awarded fellowships from Yale School of Music’s Norfolk New Music Workshop, The Aspen Festival, and Copland House CULTIVATE. Recent projects include a new work for multi-tracked violins titled the sun must bear no name, written for Austin Wulliman and awaiting a debut recording on Sello Pasmoso Records, and a new album-length song cycle for singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and harpist Parker Ramsey which premiered at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin last October thanks to a commission from the Arts Council of Ireland. 

He holds degrees from Georgia State University (B.Mus., summa cum laude), the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University (M.M.) where he was presented with the Gustav Klemm Award in Music Composition, and Princeton University (MFA and PhD) where he was a Roger Sessions Doctoral Fellow. A passionate educator, he has taught composition, music theory, aural skills, counterpoint, and music technology at Princeton, Montclair State University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Since 2024, Connor has served as composer-in-residence during summers at the Luzerne Music Center in upstate New York, where he teaches theory and composition to high school students from all over the world.

Curriculum Vitae (correct as of June 2025)