Anna Heflin is a composer, writer, and conductor who constructs high-octane, sensual worlds with non-linear narratives that thrive on musical and psychological expansion. Whether writing a symphony or a staged literature-inspired solo opera for an instrumentalist, she is drawn to the unexpected and channels her highly imaginative virtuosic visions into complex preternatural characters and unorthodox narrative arcs. Heflin’s long-term collaborations with individual artists and organizations developed over years of working as a freelance violist are central to her process and her core values include trust, risk taking, experimentation, play, open communication, and creative problem solving. She is musically invested in interweaving horizontal lines to undermine conceptions of linear time and unlock the unconscious, a folk-meets-minimalism melodic sensibility, virtuosity by means of the physical body, extreme registral choices, and intuitive conceptions of form. Her research is informed by feminist theory, Deleuzian modes of being, the New York School, Theatre of the Absurd, and modernist fiction. Heflin’s music is “at times simple and enigmatic, and at other times abrasive and viscerally expressive” (Daniel Kushner, Roc City Mag) — united by a musical “interplay blooming with substance, [exploring] sympathetic pathways flecked by Arvo Pärt-ian characteristics, in consideration of existence itself” (Martin Longley, Brooklyn Rail).

Her “roguish, arrogant, androgynous, maddening” (Max Keller, Poison Put to Sound) opera The INcomplete Cosmicomics for vocalizing cellist Aaron Wolff and looper was produced by Experiments in Opera and had a sold-out three night opening at The Tank in NYC on a double bill with a solo opera by Jason Cady. Classical Voice North America notes that “There is absolutely nothing standard about Heflin’s The INcomplete Cosmicomics….[Wolff/Qfwfq] draws the audience into his void: his hands swirling thousands of plastic beads in a tray; his bow pulled slowly up the fingerboard and down again hundreds of times, imitating breath; nonsense whispers woven together into a forest of murmurs, evoking Glenn Gould’s spoken-word contrapuntal radio play The Idea of North. We’re trapped there with him, wondering when time will end, all part of the work’s sly humor and eternal cosmic peace” (Anne E. Johnson). Seen and Heard International calls The INcomplete Cosmicomics “engrossing. It is something to experience, not comprehend.” (Rick Perdian) Heflin and Wolff are 2025 LMCC Grant Recipients for The INcomplete Cosmicomics.

Heflin is a D.M.A. candidate (ABD) in composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.