Brooklyn, New York native Anthony Gatto, born 1962, has developed a diverse body of music, often informed by literary and visual arts, exploring alternative narrative modes and structures. His cross-media works include an opera based on the novel Wise Blood , by Flannery O'Connor, presenting the shattered war veteran Hazel Motes preaching the Church Without Christ from the hood of his car, railing against American religious hypocrisy. Another opera, The Making of Americans, based on the massive, cubist novel by Gertrude Stein, explores the untimely death of David Hersland as a fulcrum for Stein's spectacular, universal language viewing generations of American families.
Anthony Gatto studied music privately with Ornette Coleman, and later completed a doctorate in composition at the Yale School of Music in 2001. He has received fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer, Inc, an ASCAP Grant to Young Composers, several residencies at Yaddo, and at The Millay Colony for the Arts, Aaron Copland House Residencies, and the Willapa Bay Artist-in-Residence program. He is an Associate Professor of Music at City University of New York.
Recordings to be released in 2019 include: Plastic Facts (2013), for sax quartet, recorded by New Thread Quartet, title cut released on New Focus Recordings; Hope is Wanting to Pull Clouds (after S. Polke)( 2018) , for piano trio, recorded by Olivia de Prato, violin, Mariel Roberts, cello, Jade Conlee, piano; Endtimes (2018), recorded by Hypercube (Erin Rogers, alto sax; Jay Sorce, guitar; Andrea Lodge, piano; Chris Graham, percussion).