Elizabeth Ogonek is an American composer living and working in New York. Her music has been described as “shimmering,” “dramatic,” and “painstakingly crafted” by the Chicago Tribune and “elusive and wondrous” by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sought after for her chamber and orchestral music, Ogonek has received commissions from the Boston, Chicago and London Symphony Orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the BBC Proms, the Fromm Foundation, the Harvard Musical Association, the Lakes Area Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Other orchestras that have performed her music include the Antwerp, Baltimore, Bavarian Radio, Bournemouth, Detroit, Gävle, St. Louis, Swedish Radio, and Toronto Symphony Orchestras, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Ensemble Modern, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Her music has been conducted by Andris Nelsons, Christian Reif, Elim Chan, Esa-Pekka Salonen, François-Xavier Roth, George Benjamin, Kirill Karabits, Ricardo Muti, Tim Weiss, and Xian Zhang. She has worked closely with violinists Benjamin Beilman and Karen Gomyo, and pianist Xak Bjerken.

Ogonek served as Mead Composer-in-Residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2015-18. In the summer of 2018, Ogonek was in residence at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. Her music was also featured in the 2018 BBC Proms in a collaboration with Gerard McBurney. In early 2020, Ogonek was in residence with the FLUX Quartet at Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama, Japan for performances of her 2013 string quartet Running at Still Life. In 2022, she became the inaugural composer-in-residence at the Lakes Area Music Festival which co-commissioned her orchestral work Starling Variations along with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Ogonek’s work has been recognized by the ASCAP Foundation, the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Ohio Arts Council, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Born in 1989, Ogonek grew up in New York City. Her primary teachers were Don Freund, Claude Baker, Michael Gandolfi, Donald Crockett, Stephen Hartke, and Julian Anderson. A former Beinecke and Marshall Scholar, she holds degrees from Indiana University, the University of Southern California and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Ogonek has held teaching positions at Oberlin Conservatory and Cornell University. In the fall of 2024, she will join the Eastman School of Music as an Associate Professor of Composition.