Hope Littwin

HOPE LITTWIN

Sound. Ritual. Performance.
Hope Littwin's music explores the euphoric realm, where the physicality of musical expression is fully embraced — where music is not only something we do, but something we are. — The Daily Princetonian

I compose for voices and ensembles, make records, and lead communal sound rituals. I believe music and sound are the medicine of the future, and that the future of leadership is collective.

Sound · Ritual · Performance

Selected works

A selection of recent pieces. Choose one to watch, read its story, or get the score. Browse the complete list of 51 works →

Upcoming

  • SUN · NOV 1 · 1:00 PM–2:30 PMGuest talk: Princeton Undergraduate Composers CollectivePrinceton University · Details →
  • SAT · NOV 7 · 6:00 PM–10:00 PMScorpio New Moon: Musical Ceremony & Dance FloorPrinceton University
  • SUN · NOV 8 · 6:00 PM–7:30 PMScorpio New Moon Sound HealingGratitude Yoga Princeton · Sign up →
  • SUN · NOV 22 · 6:00 PM–10:00 PMGemini Supermoon: Musical Ceremony & Dance FloorPrinceton University

About

Hope Littwin at home among plants, in a striped shirtPhoto © Juliette Avy

American composer and music producer Hope Littwin makes embodied, expressive music that fuses chamber and vocal writing with electronics and choreography. Her music has been commissioned by the Attacca Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Ekmeles, ModernMedieval, Hub New Music, Yarn/Wire, Gallicantus and Pro Coro Canada. In 2026 she premieres Dream Bigger for orchestra with the Princeton University Symphonia. She is a PhD candidate in composition at Princeton, host of The Hope Littwin Podcast, and founder of Sanctuary Studios.

Scores

Most of my concert works are available as PDF scores, with parts on request. Each piece's page shows what's available and the price. Browse the works →

Contact & booking

For commissions, performances, ceremonies, press, or just to say hello, write to me.

Ceremony

For more than five years I've led sound ceremonies: participatory rituals where the room itself becomes the instrument. We chant over a bed of crystal bowls, gong, harmonium and guitar; we call and respond; we sit in long silence; and we close with care, walking everyone back across the threshold into ordinary time.

More than fifty gatherings so far: in Princeton University Chapel and a salt cave, in yoga studios in Chicago and Princeton, in forests and private homes, and with vocal ensembles in Kerala, Oaxaca, Mexico City, Rīga and Vilnius. Some follow the moon. Some are built around a single mantra, like the Pauri of Infinity. All of them are built so the line between performer and participant dissolves. No one is put on the spot, and no experience is needed, in meditation or in singing.

The ceremonies are also my research. My dissertation at Princeton, Beyond Our Understanding: Music as Spiritual Technology, treats each one as fieldwork: music's oldest job, a group of people becoming, however briefly, a community.

Hope Littwin leading a sound ceremony, gong and singing bowls, the room with hands raised