Jessica Rudman’s music inspires empathy for social issues through stories of myth, magic, and the modern world. Described as a “new music ninja” by the Hartford Advocate, she blends lyrical melodies and dramatic narrative structures with sensual harmony and vibrant color to draw the audience into the world she has created. Her works for the concert hall, dance, and opera often differ in musical language and approach, with the common thread always being expressivity. She believes that the ability to reach one’s audience is of extreme importance in our current social, economic, and political environment.
Rudman’s compositions have been presented across the United States, Europe, and South America by ensembles including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Cadillac Moon Ensemble, The Omaha Symphony’s Chamber Orchestra, the Yakima Symphony Orchestra, and the Hartford Independent Chamber Orchestra.
Rudman also writes extensively for student and community ensembles, recently completing commissions for the Connecticut Region 14 Band program, the Connecticut Children’s Choir, the First Unitarian Church of Portland (OR), and the Astoria Choir. Many of these commissions involved collaborative residencies: for example, Masks for concert band is based on melodic fragments that the students composed, and Of Equality for children’s choir combines a text by Walt Whitman with responses by the students.
In 2018, Jessica’s chamber opera Marie Curie Learns to Swim (libretto by Kendra Preston Leonard) was premiered by Hartford Opera Theater. The work explores the life the notable scientist through flashbacks during a vacation with her daughter, and focuses on her experiences as a woman in a male-dominated field and an immigrant in her adopted country.
Recent works include Letters from the Anthropocene, a twenty-minute song cycle for voice and piano on texts by Laurana Wheeler Roderer, commissioned by a consortium; Wind Rising in the Alleys, a setting of Lola Ridge for treble choir, two percussionists, and piano, commissioned by the Utah Music Educators Association; and Critical Mass, a nine-minute work for clarinet choir premiered at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest in 2025. Jessica has also set texts by Kendra Preston Leonard in the choral work The Survivors’ Blessing and the art song Where It’s Safe. This fall, Exsilium, a song cycle for soprano, piano, and percussion commissioned by the NOVA Chamber Series, and Jenny Held Fast Her Love for Pierrot ensemble will premiere.
Jessica is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Utah. She previously was the Chair of Academic Studies and Composition at The Hartt Community School, where she also directed the Hartt Preparatory Academy. She has taught at The Hartt School, Central Connecticut State University, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Baruch College.
Highly involved in the new music community as a concert organizer and music educator, Rudman volunteers with SCI and CMS, as well as the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, where she runs the student workshop.
Jessica’s research also focuses on composition pedagogy. She co-founded Teaching Composition: A Symposium on Music Composition Pedagogy with Linda Dusman. The symposium was hosted at the University of Utah in 2023, where she presented “Purpose as the Guiding Force in Composers’ Development.” Her current research examines private composition lessons in higher education, beginning with a pilot study supported by a John R. Park Fellowship and continuing with a national study supported by a Faculty Small Grant. This fall she will present “Examining Private Composition Lessons Through the Lens of Topic Management” at the College Music Society National Conference. She has also facilitated CMS discussion forums on the pedagogy of creativity (2025) and on collegiate composition training (2026).
As a theorist, Jessica has presented papers on Ligeti and Zwilich at meetings of the New England Conference of Music Theorists (NECMT), the West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis, the National Student Electronic Music Event, and various SCI regional conferences. She has also presented research on the Greek Genera at the European Music Analysis Conference in 2014. Her more recent presentations address pedagogy: in 2024 she presented “Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum: Redesigning the Theory Core Using Problem-Based Learning” at the College Music Society National Conference and at Pedagogy Into Practice: Teaching Music Theory in the Twenty-First Century.
Honors include winning the Riot Ensemble’s Commissioning Competition, the Robert Starer Award, the Boston Metro Opera’s Advocacy Award, the College Music Society Student Composer Award, the NewMusic@ECU Orchestra Composition Competition, and IAWM’s Libby Larsen Prize. She was a 2019 Connecticut Artist Fellow, with support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. She also was a 2019-2021 Fellow in American Opera Project’s Composers and the Voice program. She has since received grants from the Salt Lake City Arts Council and the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.
Jessica holds a B.A. with Distinction in Music from the University of Virginia, a M.M. in Music Composition from The Hartt School, and an A.D. in Music Composition, also from Hartt. She completed her Ph.D. at the City University of New York, where she studied with Tania León.