Paola Prestini

About Paola Prestini

Paola Prestini is a renowned composer and co-founder of National Sawdust in NYC and the arts production company and think tank, VisionIntoArt. She has cultivated a uniquely expansive and humanistic musical voice through pieces that transcend genre and discipline, and projects whose global impact reverberates beyond the walls of the concert hall. Prestini's works give voice to those whom society has silenced and offer a platform for the causes that are most vital to us all.

Known for pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary art and composition, Prestini is a recipient of the 2026 Bluesky Medal for Global Arts Prize and a 2025 Creative Capital Award. She has been a composer-in-residence at the American Academy of Rome and is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. She has been recognized as one of the Top 35 Women Composers in Classical Music by the Washington Post, one of the top 100 Composers in the World by National Public Radio, and one of the Top 30 Professionals of the Year by Musical America. At National Sawdust, she has collaborated with luminaries such as poet Robin Coste Lewis, visual artists Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and musical legends David Byrne, Philip Glass, and Renée Fleming. As a leader, she oversaw the capital project of owning their Williamsburg home and created strategic programs including opportunities for gender-marginalized composers, residency, and commissioning programs. Her works have been performed worldwide by leading institutions, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s Barbican Center and Royal Ballet and Opera, and Mexico’s Bellas Artes.

Prestini's 2026-2027 season includes a Mexican tour of her acclaimed processional opera, Primero Sueño; an operatic re-imagining of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea at Los Angeles Opera and the Prototype Festival in NYC; and three symphonic world premieres at the MITO SettembreMusica festival in Milan and Torino, Columbus Symphony, and Lincoln’s Symphony. Her works in development include the monodrama Untitled (inspired by Cindy Sherman), the radio opera No One is Forgotten with Sxip Shirey and Winter Miller (both starring Eve Gigliotti), and an operatic monument commissioned by the Spoleto Festival with Ava Duvernay and Robin Coste Lewis. She immigrated to the United States from Italy, attended the Peabody School of Music, and is a graduate of the Juilliard School.