Justin Ralls, composer, conductor, and arranger hails from the Pacific Northwest and is inspired by the beauty of the natural world and our “elemental imagination.”
Ralls has conducted his works at the Hydansaal in Eisenstadt, Austria, the Lucca International Youth Orchestra Festival in Albano Terme, Italy, Oregon Bach Festival, Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Britt Festival at Crater Lake National Park, the Newman Scoring Stage at 2oth Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, as well as venues in Salzburg, Rome, Portland, Fairbanks, Boston, San Francisco and beyond. Ralls’ work has been described as “a beautifully textured, lush evocation of John Muir’s Yosemite that was full of color and light” (Daily Gazette, NY), “a gifted melodist…a beautiful blend of natural and human-made music” (Artslandia), and “a whirlwind of thick orchestral textures…definitely establishing his own voice…” (SF Examiner). Ralls’ Tree Ride won the 2013 Highsmith Award for orchestra and received Special Distinction in the 2014 ASCAP Rudolf Nissim Prize as well as the 2017-18 American Prize. Tree Ride was featured on the 2014 Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Fairbanks, Alaska conducted by Robert Franz. Tree Ride was also featured on Albany Symphony’s 2015 Composer-to-Center-Stage as well as their 2017 American Music Festival, conducted by David Alan Miller. John Adams spoke of Tree Ride as “impressive…showing a mastery of orchestral technique,” also stating “your analogy to natural forces was done very well, your thunderstorm basically better than the Pastoral.”
As conductor and Artistic Director of Opera Theater Oregon he has led the NW premieres of Academy Award winning composer Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince, Michael Lanci’sSongs for Joe Hill and Grammy Award winning composer Michael Daugherty’sThis Land Sings, co-directing OTO alongside frequent collaborator, Lisa Lipton. In collaboration with Filmusik, which combines live foley, voice acting, and music, Ralls was commissioned and conducted two original live film scores including Gamera vs. Zigra and Turkish Rambo, conducting six shows at Portland’s historic Hollywood Theater. In 2017 Opera Theater Oregon produced the world premiere of Ralls’ chamber opera, Two Yosemites: An Environmental Opera,setting the 1903 meeting of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt, featuring tenor Aaron Short and baritone Nicholas Meyer – “Ralls took this thematic coloring to the next level, in the finest operatic tradition,” (Oregon Arts Watch). In 2018 Ralls received a commission from pianist Hunter Noack’s In a Landscapeseries of outdoor solo piano concerts in wild spaces and public lands throughout Oregon. Throughout the pandemic Ralls continued collaborations with Portland Opera Resident Artist, Camille Sherman, composing and arranging songs for clarinet and mezzo-soprano, including the popular 1919 song The World is Waiting for the Sunrise and Opera Theater Oregon’s Dream Within A Dream episode series. Eugene Opera premiered Ralls’ Three Songs on their “Songs of Quarantine” virtual series in Spring, 2021. Ralls’ work Olmsted 200: Theme and Variations commemorated the 200th anniversary of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s birth, and was commissioned and performed by Landscape Composers Network, Juventas New Music Ensemble, American Wild Ensemble, and Michigan Technical University in 2022. Recent projects include original scores for the environmental short film, In Search of the Stars collaborating with award-winning filmmaker, Sriram Murali.
He is passionate about the transformative and communal power of music to bring ideas and communities together, whether between human communities or humans and the more-than-human world.
Recent projects include, Nu-Nah-Hup: Sacajawea’s Story, an opera collaboration with Rose Ann Abrahamson (Agai-Dika/Lemhi-Shoshone culture bearer and great-great-grandniece of Sacajawea) portraying the Indigenous perspective of her ancestor, Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition, collaborating as well with Shoshone composer and flutist, Hovia Edwards. This project includes language and culture preservation in an interdisciplinary collaboration with the Shoshoni Language Project at the University of Utah, receiving a 2022 award from the Native Voices Endowment of Endangered Language Fund at Yale University.
Ralls and Edwards were also recently commissioned to compose a Native American flute concerto, collaborating with Maestro Nell Flanders and the Idaho State Civic Symphony for their 2026-27 season.
Ralls’ education includes a Bachelor of Music in Composition from The Boston Conservatory where he studied with Dalit Warshaw, Andy Vores, and Jan Swafford; a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory under the tutelage of Dan Becker and David Conte; and Ph.D. in Music Composition, with specialized research in Nature, New Media, and Indigenous Thought at the University of Oregon, where he has taught composition, as well as studying with composers Robert Kyr, David Crumb and electronic music with Jeffrey Stolet. His doctoral dissertation, a three-act eco-fairy tale opera Song of the Most Beautiful Bird of the Forest, is a synthesis of dance, music, and story, influenced by scholarship in eco-musicology, soundscape ecology, and intercultural collaboration with Ghanaian Master drummer and dancer, Dr. Habib Iddrisu. From 2020-2021 Ralls taught composition and musicianship at Linfield University as an Adjunct Professor of Music.
He enjoys the outdoors, hiking, backpacking, reading and spending time with his family, including his wife, Anne, his daughter, Evelyn Rose and their dog, Laika, and kitty, Zoli.
