Alyssa Reit

Alyssa Reit is an independent composer, arranger, performer, teacher, and storyteller. As a harpist, she has performed with institutions ranging from the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Metropolitan Opera, to contemporary music groups and Irish bands. She has given concerts with John Cage, toured Europe with the legendary Martha Clarke, and traveled the United States playing with the world famous vocal group, Anonymous 4. Her main body of work has been creating theatrical-musical settings of myths, classic stories, and fairy tales; these have been performed at such venues as the Caramoor Center for the Arts, the NYU Steinhardt’s storytelling series, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to critical acclaim. She has received several commissions to set Hans Christian Andersen tales for the New York Scandinavian Summer Music Festival, and collaborated with flutist Sato Moughalian to arrange traditional Armenian folk music (recorded on the album Oror). She wrote, arranged, and performed music for The Triumph of Love, a production based on the life and work of Botticelli, which premiered in Italy. Alyssa’s compositions and arrangements have been played at events sponsored by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra, as well as at festivals all over the world, including the Encontro International de Cordas in Brazil.