Prof. Yvette Janine Jackson

Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer of electroacoustic, chamber, and orchestral music whose work draws from theatrical sound design to create an aesthetic she calls “radio opera. Her compositions explore narrative through spatial audio, distributed agency, and historical reflection while crafting immersive listening experiences described by The Guardian as “immersive non-visual films.

Jackson’s work has been presented internationally at venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, the Venice Music Biennale, the Borealis Festival, and ZKM | Center for Art and Media. She has received commissions from institutions including the American Composers Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Cashmere Radio for Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Her scoring credits include music for Barclay DeVeau’s The Cassandra Project and PBS’s Poetry in America, and she has permanent sound installations at Wave Farm and the International African American Museum. Jackson is a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2025) and the Giga-Hertz Production Award (2021), granted by ZKM and SWR Experimental studio to support innovation in electronic music. Her writing on narrative soundscape composition appears in Composing While Black and Between the Tracks (MIT Press) where her contributions engage with listening and identity in contemporary electroacoustic practices.

Jackson is the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor in the Humanities and faculty in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry in the Department of Music. She holds a PhD in Music–Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA from Columbia University, where she was introduced to the world of tape splicing, analog synthesis, and computer music at the historic Computer Music Center.