Press Kit

Mia Theodoratus is an adventurous sound maker who plays harp and ancient Greek lyre. She studied at the Peabody Conservatory, the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of the Arts.

Her musical life is varied: psych-folk bands that played CBGB, Coney Island High and Pink Pony; improvising groups such as the Go Organic Orchestra at Central Park SummerStage and Optipus at the Whitney Biennial, MoMA and dirty basements; and classical performances at Carnegie Hall.

Favorite performances include Life Ball in Vienna, Glamour Club in Shanghai and a concert by invitation of President Barack Obama.

Her current love is playing period music on dital and single-action harps and bringing them into non-classical venues. Another is bringing the words of the poet Sappho alive with her lyre and prerecorded tracks.

Mia Theodoratus is an adventurous sound maker. Her official classifications are composer, improviser, educator, lyrist and harpist. She has an MFA from CalArts, where she studied with Susan Allen, and a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, the Irish Arts Center in New York, the Mozartina Conservatory and her private studio.

Mia performs, records, composes and makes mischief throughout the world; her current stomping ground is New York City. She performs with Adam Rudolph’s Go Organic Orchestra, in the opera Penelope by composer Milica Paranosic and librettist Cheri Magid, with avant-garde percussionist Michael Evans, Bradley Eros’s Optipus and Lary 7, and in her own solo performances on electric, Celtic and pedal harps and ancient Greek-style lyres.

In the ’90s Mia joined the downtown art scene with electric and acoustic harps. She co-founded the rock band Vardo with Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables; the quartet often played CBGB, Coney Island High, Luna Lounge and the Knitting Factory, and opened the Box and Arlene’s Grocery. Mia never said no to any artist, whatever the subject matter or vision. That led to performances with Taylor Mac, Antony and the Johnsons and the Bindlestiff Circus, and to performance art pieces at Mother, Jackie 60’s Night of a Thousand Stevies and Don Hill’s.

The 2000s were just as diverse. Her first group of the decade was the Citizens Band, sponsored by Deitch Projects. She composed, arranged and performed pieces for Art Basel in the shows The Trepanning Opera, No New Thing Under the Sun and The Nature Show. From the Citizens Band she formed a duo with Adam Dugas. They were featured in his series Chaos and Candy with Casey Spooner, performed with Ann Magnuson, flew to Shanghai as featured performers for the fashion house Shanghai Tang, played Life Ball in Vienna, and appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vogue and Artforum.

Other favorite performances include an invitation by President Barack Obama to play in concert at the U.S. Capitol; National Shakespeare’s Oedipus with Avery Brooks in Athens; the Whitney Biennial with Catherine Sullivan; music for Gelatin (Bunter Abend, Golden Gate); the Metropolitan Museum with Cormac de Barra; a solo set for the United Nations; and Butch Morris’s Skyscrapers. Her composing for film and television includes Flight of the Conchords, Million Dollar Listing and Rubicon on AMC.

Recordings include Soft Focus on Sähkö Recordings with Jimi Tenor and Lary 7, The Psalms by Jessi Colter on Legacy (2017), The Word by the Jay Vons, and countless private-label projects. Her latest release, In a Basement in Brooklyn (2024), features electric harp, bray harp and ancient Greek lyre with Lary 7, Masami Tomihisa and vintage analog synthesizers.

Mia loves making noise. She will play with anyone who cherishes sound. She hopes that you will listen, and that it will either bring you joy or make you entirely too uncomfortable.