Lewis & Clark alumna and Portland-based new music powerhouse Lisa Neher has been named the 2025 Composer of the Year by the Oregon Music Teachers Association (OMTA) and the 2025 Commissioned Composer by the Iowa Music Teachers Association (IMTA). As part of the award, both MTAs have commissioned new works inspired by the natural world.
Each year, Music Teachers Association chapters from around the country recognize outstanding talent in their state with the Composer of the Year Award. As an honoree, Neher receives not only a commission from OMTA and IMTA, but will represent each state in the competition for the national Distinguished Composer of the Year Award, hosted by the Music Teachers National Association in March 2026.
“Lisa’s solid, heartfelt, and timely writing put her on the top of our lists,” OMTA Composer of the Year committee members Paul Safar and Amy Fairchild said. “We are proud to have Lisa represent Oregon at the MTNA competition this year.”
The commission, Love in a Time of Climate Change, featured text by poet Craig Santo Perez, and premiered at the OMTA State Conference in the Florence Event Center in June. This work marks the third collaboration between Neher and Perez—their last major song cycle (which included text by Felicia Zamora), No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us, was funded in part by the University of Oklahoma Faculty Senate and the University of Cincinnati Office of the Vice President for Research, premiered at a Cincinnati Song Initiative concert in May.
In Iowa, pianist and MTNA West Central Division Director-Elect Jason Sifford presented the world premiere of Neher’s instrumental work, Nautilus, at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa as part of the 2025 IMTA conference in June. A seven-minute piano solo, the work explores the nautilus’s biology, behavior, and ecosystem.
“Working with Lisa was a natural choice for our organization,” Sifford said. “She has maintained close ties with our community and her work has a strong, unique voice. We are looking forward to the premiere of Nautilus and are proud to have found a place in her growing catalogue.”
Described by Willamette Week as “not only as a supremely talented artist, but an unfailingly compassionate creator whose passion for animals and the natural world propels her work,” these commissions are the latest in a long-standing career of award-winning, socially-conscious music.
“A friend told me, ‘facts speak to our minds, but art speaks to our hearts,’” Neher said. “It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the facts of climate change—to dissociate and to freeze. When we feel something, it can propel action.”
Neher is an award-winning composer and new music mezzo on a mission to transform audiences through sound, story, and vulnerability. With a voice praised as “full and rich” and “especially alive” (Oregon ArtsWatch), Neher’s performance credits include Portland Opera, Third Angle New Music, Really Spicy Opera, Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre Oregon, New Music Gathering, Resonance Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, Renegade Opera, and Big Mouth Society.
Described as a “supremely talented,” “visionary composer” (Willamette Week), “maestro of beautifully wacky noises” (Oregon ArtsWatch) and author of “liquid, impressionist piano writing and fluent melding” of voices (New York Classical Review), Neher’s compositions are inspired by the climate crisis, the tender love of family and friends, and the eerie mystery of deep ocean life. She is Composer in Residence for the Beaverton Community Band. She has been commissioned and performed by the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Cincinnati Song Initiative, Third Angle New Music, FearNoMusic, Dinosaur Annex, New Opera West, Mirror Visions Ensemble, Alma Ensemble, Opera Elect, and Opera Santa Barbara, among others.
Her awards include OMTA Composer of the Year, IMTA Composer of the Year, Flute New Music Consortium Competition, ICDA/ICF Choral Competition, Mirror Visions Ensemble Young Composer Competition and the Celebris Ensemble Choral Competition.
As the founder and executive and artistic director of New Wave Opera, she has fostered the successful performances of musical works by over fifty living composers and writers, including eight complete opera productions featuring over three dozen Oregon-based vocalists, instrumentalists, and theatre professionals.
Neher holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Iowa, a Masters of Music in Composition from the University of Kansas, and undergraduate degrees in Music and Theatre from Lewis & Clark. She is an alumna of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and the Cortona Sessions for New Music.
Learn more about Neher at lisanehermusic.com.
