Nathan Currier is a unique classical composer who has become deeply involved – both within his musical works and his public life – with the complexities of climate science. A winner of many coveted composition awards such as the Rome Prize, Guggenheim, and the American Academy of Arts & Letters’ Academy Award, given for lifetime achievement, Currier is also Senior Climate Advisor for Public Policy Virginia. His music has been performed at prestigious venues, from Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center to the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus in Berlin to the Theatre de la Ville and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Three of his chamber works have been performed at the Berlin Philharmonic, including the premiere of his Possum Wakes from Playing Dead, commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic.

The topic of Currier's largest musical work is Gaia theory - which views the Earth as a single, self-regulating entity, like a superorganism - and his massive oratorio Gaian Variations was premiered at Avery Fisher Hall by the Brooklyn Philharmonic on Earth Day, 2004. Currier has also written about Gaia theory, recently co-authoring with NASA scientist Paul D. Lowman a chapter of the book Chimeras and Consciousness, published by MIT Press (2011). Premieres last year include his new Piano Concerto commissioned as winner of the 2008 International Sackler Prize for Composition, Looking Out, for soprano, tenor and ensemble, commissioned by the New York Festival of Song, and Falling Stars, for baritone and ensemble, commissioned for the 2010 Monadnock Festival. Among his many other musical awards and honors are the National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright, NYFA, Fromm, Ives, Barlow, and ASCAP awards and prizes.

Currier has been a member of Al Gore’s Climate Project since 2007. He has spoken at Columbia University, New York University, and UNICEF Headquarters at the United Nations, among many others, and has now presented to about 1,000 people about climate change. He recently served as a panelist for a segment of Gore's “24 Hours of Reality,” along with leading climate scientists like Drew Shindell of NASA, which live-streamed to a viewership of 8.5 million.

Renowned critic Tim Page has written that “Currier’s music is often wildly virtuosic,” and that his “engaging, virtuosic and richly inventive” works do not “fit into any of the pre-fabricated categories that have been set aside to describe composers...ultimately, Currier is an independent, with no seeming allegiance to any creed but the most valuable one of all – that of creating a succinct, personal and well-crafted music.” Currier studied at Juilliard and Peabody, was the Leonard Bernstein Fellow in composition at Tanglewood, and also holds a Diploma with First Prize from the Royal Conservatory of Belgium. The diversity of his composition teachers – Joseph Schwantner, Frederic Rzweski, David Diamond, Bernard Rands and Steven Albert – reflects the encompassing palette of his music. He is also an accomplished pianist, having won the Silver Medal in the International Piano Recording Competition in his early twenties for a performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

Other important musical works include his quintet Thirty Little Pictures of Time Passing, part of the Berlin Philharmonic’s chamber music series. His very first commissioned work, premiered in India, was hailed by the critic as a “piece of genius,” with the prediction that “the world will hear a lot and drink deep of the creative cup of Nathan Currier.” His one act monodrama A Kafka Cantata was rated the #1 Musical Event of the Year in Pittsburgh by that city’s chief newspaper after its premiere there in 1992, and his music has also been broadcast nationally in the U.S. on National Public Radio with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and heard at major musical establishments such as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. His music is recorded on Chandos, Crystal and New World Records, and is published by Theodore Presser Co. Currier has also frequently been given residency awards, such as at the Bellagio Center in Italy and the Camargo Foundation in France, as well as MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, Millay, Ucross, Ragdale, Blue Mountain Center, and Djerassi. He has been Composer-in-Residence at the Wintergreen (2007) and at Music on the Hill (2011) festivals, and been heard on other festivals such as the Bergen International Festival in Norway and the Stresa Festival in Italy. He recently served on the faculty of the University of Virginia for two years, previously having taught at Juilliard, on their Evening Division and MAP faculties, for a decade. Currier grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and comes from a musical family.