Emily Cooley (born 1990)
Emily Cooley was born in Milwaukee. She has degrees from Yale, the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music. She is currently based in Philadelphia.
Emily Cooley’s website states:
Frequently in dialogue with works of contemporary fiction and critical theory, her music questions conventions of narrative, re-imagines emotional expression, and explores the dynamics of power and vulnerability.
Her 2014 piano trio Now is the Time is characterized by gentle textures that only rarely become more agitated:
Emily Cooley’s song Beautiful Small Things (2017) was composed as part of a project to set to music the written words of autistic and primarily nonspeaking young people, in this case the 22-year-old Ryan Harris. The words are “I want to see the world, not by the whole, but by the all too beautiful small things. My overwhelming emotion is that there is always hope.”