MUSE • Musicians United for Social Equity

Biography

Chinyere (C.J.) Obasi is an American composer, lyricist, bookwriter, and orchestrator from Kearney, Nebraska.

His short musical, The Immigrant Project (composer, lyricist, bookwriter), won the inaugural Nebraska Thespian Musicalworks competition in 2020, and his first full-length musical, The Fortunates (co-librettist) was premiered by the Office for the Arts at Harvard in 2021.  

He has recently collaborated with organizations such as the Hyperion Shakespeare Company (as composer/orchestrator for their production of The Winter’s Tale and director/music director for King John) and the Radcliffe Choral Society (as a commissioned composer). He was the 2021 winner of the Bach Society Prize for Classical Composition and the 2022 Francis Boott Prize for Choral Composition, and he just finished a year as assistant music director of the Mozart Society Orchestra.

Chinyere is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, where he studies the history and philosophy of science. When not working or studying, he writes for the Harvard Political Review.