Melissa Hyatt Foss

Melissa Hyatt Foss is a musician, instrument-maker, and composer hailing from Maryland and Vermont. After receiving her BA in Art History at James Madison University she relocated to Argentina where she studied and developed her career as a performer, researcher, and teaching artist for over a decade. She completed her Master’s degree in Musical Creation, New Technologies and Traditional Arts at the National University of Argentina, specializing in the recreation of ancient sound artifacts of the Americas and electroacoustic composition. For seven years she was a soloist with the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies, performing in Argentina and touring abroad in Europe and Central America. 

Melissa has cultivated an interdisciplinary practice that takes shape in sound sculptures, musical instruments, and organic electronica. Her work is a multifaceted contemplation of the beauty of our human heritage, the wisdom of our ancestors, and a search for their place in our world today. Her composition “Hanblecheyapi,” which was composed using a collection of her own hand-built instruments from the three Americas, was one of the International Rostrum of Composers’ 12 recommended works in 2018 and has since been broadcast by the BBC and other radio programs in Finland, Portugal and Austria among others.

She is currently based in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is a Resident Artist with the Creative Alliance.