Anna Heflin is a composer, writer and conductor who constructs high-octane, humorous, and sensual worlds with non-linear narratives that thrive on musical and psychological fragmentation. 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 that are “a bit wild!!” (audience member to Exec Director). 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. 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).

Heflin’s orchestral works have been performed by Buffalo Philharmonic as part of June in Buffalo and the USC Symphony Orchestra. The Prague Philharmonia will give her orchestra piece Einmal ist keinmal (2025) its EU debut this November 2025 on the Ostrava Center for New Music’s Essential Ostrava - New York concert. In addition to composing concert music, Heflin creates dramatic works using her own literary and historically-inspired librettos.

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 (CVNA) 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.

Her works have been performed by S.E.M. Ensemble at Bohemian National Hall in NYC, at Cathedral of the Divine Saviour in the Czech Republic as part of Ostrava Days, DOX Prague, PowerStation NYC, Bang on A Can, Banff Centre, Arete Gallery, Spectrum NYC, University of Oregon, Oracle Egg, Rochester Fringe Festival, University at Buffalo, MATA Presents and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Heflin’s debut album, The Redundancy of the Angelic: An Interluding Play (Infrequent Seams, 2021) is out now on cassette and all streaming platforms and has been lauded as “one of the most adaptable releases of the year to date” (Robert Ham).

Her compositions do not fit neatly into a box and neither does she – she is invigorated by approaching music from every angle and can be found writing program notes, giving academic lectures, hosting radio shows, leading roundtable discussions, and running her journal Which Sinfonia. As a scholar, she has presented at Northwestern University New Music Conference 2025 on “Musical Relations Between The AACM and Ostrava Days” and at Brooklyn College as part of Mise-En Festival 2024 on “Frederic Rzewski and the Contradictoriness of the Symphony Orchestra”. Internationally, numerous writings by Heflin have been translated to Czech for the Czech outlet HIS Voice. 

As a developing conductor, she has served as Whitney George’s assistant conductor for George’s opera No Man’s Land (2025), premiered new music at Ostrava Days 2025, and has incorporated conducting into her Doctorate at USC Thornton.

Heflin received her BM in viola performance in 2015 from University of California Santa Barbara, where she studied with Helen Callus. She graduated with her MM in viola performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2017, where she studied with Jodi Levitz and took electronic music courses in the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) department.  After living in NYC and studying composition with Eric Wubbels for over five years, she moved to Los Angeles and is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Music Composition at USC’s Thornton School of Music, where she is working with faculty members Ted Hearne, Nina C Young and Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother).