As well as having worked decades hand-in-hand with giants of music from both the classical and jazz worlds, Patrick Zimmerli has cultivated one of the most celebrated and unique voices in music today.

"These are masterful compositions and the playing is incomparably beautiful. And the compositions also worth discovering over and over again.” —London Jazz News

“My first reaction to Patrick Zimmerli's music was that it was fun to listen to. But with repeated listening, I came to understand how substantial Zimmerli's works truly are… “ BeautyinEphemera

Patrick Zimmerli is a New York- and Paris-based composer, producer, and saxophonist. In 2024 he was awarded a Copland Fund grant to support the 2025 release of his new album Messages. His recently completed full length opera, Lucia Joyce, will receive its premiere in Dublin in 2026.

His album Sun on Sand, with Joshua Redman and the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, was released on Nonesuch Recordings in 2019. This marks his third collaboration with Nonesuch, following Modern Music, his two-piano album featuring Kevin Hays and Brad Mehldau, and Redman’s Walking Shadows. In 2020 he released Book of Dreams, a vinyl-only album, on Newvelle Records.

Since winning the inaugural Thelonious Monk Composers Competition in 1993, he has released 12 albums of his own music, and has written, recorded and performed with many leading lights in the classical and jazz worlds.

During the COVID crisis, Zimmerli created a “Virtual Venue” concept featuring musicians filmed around the world, using filmic techniques to give the illusion of their playing together. The pilot, entitled Children of Bronzeville, portrayed Zimmerli’s song cycle based on poems of Gwendolyn Brooks, and spawned video collaborations with such artists as Kurt Elling, Shelly Berg, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Tierney Sutton, Niki Harris, and John Daversa. He produced Children of Bronzeville as a video/documentary for Savage Content, featuring vocalists Samara Joy, Vanisha Gould, and Joshua Banbury, along with pianists Helen Sung and Aaron Diehl.

Pre-COVID projects include Views of Chicago, a “multi-composition” of nine pieces for nine ensembles across genres in the Chicago area; and a Concerto for Flute and Jazz Percussion for Jasmine Choi, Satoshi Takeishi and the New York Classical Players, premiered in early 2020. From 2016-17 Zimmerli curated the INTERSECT festival in NYC’s Bryant Park.

Zimmerli has written numerous orchestral, chamber and choral works, including two four-movement Piano Trios for the Seattle Chamber Music Festival and two four- movement Piano Concertos with jazz percussion, for Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra with pianists Ethan Iverson and Sonia Rubinsky.

Other large-scale pieces include Clockworks, a Chamber Music America Commission, premiered at (le) Poisson Rouge and released on CD in 2018. In 2017 he wrote Alan Seeger: Instrument of Destiny, an oratorio for male choir, operatic tenor, jazz percussion and piano, premiered at the Invalides Cathedral in Paris, reprised in Reims, at the Fondation Boghossian in Brussels, and New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This work spawned a radio program with narration by NPR’s Scott Simon, aired on NPR stations on Memorial Day 2021.

Zimmerli’s music has been performed at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, Salle Pleyel in Paris, Sala São Paolo in Brazil, the Vienna Konzerthaus Grosser Saal, the SF Jazz Center, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His music has been featured at MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum, on NPR and WQXR, and has been released on the Naxos, Blue Note, Arabesque, Songlines, and Naïve labels. He has taught at the Paris Conservatoire, Sciences Po, and Columbia University, where he holds a DMA in Composition.