TED HEARNE is an active composer, conductor, and performer of new music in the New York and Chicago areas. He is Artistic Director of Yes is a World, a nonprofit organization working to promote peace and social change through musical diversity and the collaboration of young artists. Since their inception in January 2002, Yes is a World has produced seven performances integrating music and text from different artistic traditions, including a production of Tony Kushner's one-act play, Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy, and Kiss the Speaker Wire, an exploration of protest music from America and South Africa. Yes is a World most recently produced Body Soldiers, a concert about the ways South Africans are using choral music in the fight against HIV-AIDS.

Ted was the music director for the premiere of David Lang’s opera Anatomy Theatre (performed by ICE), and assistant musical director for Lang’s The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. He was musical director and keyboardist for an October 2006 production of The Carbon Copy Building in Liverpool, UK, the Obie-winning opera co-composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe. Both works were produced by Ridge Theatre. Ted is also the resident conductor of New York’s Red Light Ensemble, specializing in contemporary music. Performances have included Grisey’s Vortex Temporum, Beat Fürrer’s Gaspra, Fabien Levy’s a small treatise of love and geometry and premieres of works by A. Vincent Raikhel, Daniel Vezza, Scott Wollschleger and Christopher Cerrone.

Ted was named composer-in-residence of the Chicago Children's Choir in 2003. The choir has premiered several of his works, including Cantata: Songs of the Divided in June 2004. Performed with a select ensemble from the Chicago Youth Symphony, this twenty-minute work weaves together texts and melodies from five embattled regions around the world - Chechnya, Rwanda, Ireland, Palestine and Korea into a meditation on the struggle for home and identity. He also worked with Jai Uttal as co-composer and arranger for Sita Ram, a world music opera performed by the choir last spring at Ravinia Festival Park. His newest commission from the CCC, Because, was performed on their 2007 Civil Rights Tour.

Ted received his Bachelor's Degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied composition with Julia Wolfe and Nils Vigeland. Upon graduation he was a recipient of the Nicholas Flagello Award, given to one student annually for outstanding work in classical composition. He was a composition fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute 2004, and served as adjunct faculty at Manhattan School of Music from 2004-2006. Ted sings regularly with the choir of St. Mary the Virgin (New York) and has worked with ICE, TACTUS, Bang on a Can, Ridge Theatre, Jai Uttal and Peter Schreier, among others. He is currently enrolled in the Master’s degree program at Yale School of Music, having studied there with Aaron Jay Kernis and Martin Bresnick.