Jocelyn Hagen composes music that has been described as “simply magical” (Fanfare Magazine) and “dramatic and deeply moving” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul).  She is a pioneer in the field of composition, pushing the expectations of musicians and audiences with large-scale multimedia works, electro-acoustic music, dance, opera, and publishing.

Her first forays into composition were via songwriting, still very evident in her work.  The majority of her compositions are for the voice: solo, chamber and choral.  Her melodic music is rhythmically driven and texturally complex, rich in color and deeply heartfelt.  In 2023, her opera The Song Poet, written with Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang, premiered with Minnesota Opera, and sold out their run over six months prior to the premiere date.

In 2019, she celebrated the premiere of her multimedia symphony The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, which includes video projections created by a team of visual artists, highlighting da Vinci’s spectacular drawings, inventions, and texts.  The work has already been performed over fifty times across the United States, and in Canada, Sweden, Croatia, and England.

Hagen describes her process of composing for choir, orchestra and film simultaneously in a Tedx Talk given at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, now available on YouTube.  Hagen’s commissions include Choirs of America, Voces8, Conspirare, the Minnesota Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, the International Federation of Choral Music, True Concord Voices and Orchestra, the American Choral Directors Associations of Minnesota, Georgia, Connecticut and Texas, the North Dakota Music Teachers Association, Cantus, the Boston Brass, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the St. Olaf Band, among many others.

Her work is independently published through JH Music, as well as through Graphite Publishing, G. Schirmer, EC Schirmer, Fred Bock Music Publishing, Santa Barbara Music Publishing, and Boosey and Hawkes.