Susan Oetgen is a composer and performer of contemporary, multi-disciplinary music/theater projects. At the center of her artistic mission is the Brooklyn ‘post-pop’ quartet Likeness to Lily, which she founded in 2003, and with whom she has produced two full-length studio recordings, Solitude’s Dollhouse (2006) and Farewell, Recruit (2009). As a participant in the 2007-2008 Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Composer Mentorship Program, Oetgen premiered her multimedia song cycle Bazm-o-Razm, written for Likeness to Lily and members of the orchestra, in collaboration with artist Justin Waldstein, photographer Alan Chin and choreographer Sahar Javedani, on the Brooklyn Phil’s Music-off-the-Walls series at the Brooklyn Museum. Oetgen’s music has also been performed on the Music with a View series at The Flea Theater, the Live Arts Collaboration Salon series at The Performance Project at University Settlement, and the Vermont Arts Exchange’s Basement Music Series. For the inaugural Capital Fringe Festival in 2006, Oetgen wrote and performed the solo music/theater piece I.E.D.: Improvised Experimental Diva, reviewed by The Washington Post as “A perfect Fringe experience…Oetgen hits her target; her a cappella ending is dynamite.”

Oetgen has collaborated with other notable Brooklyn composer/performers, including touring nationally and internationally in Cynthia Hopkins’ modern operetta Must Don’t Whip ‘Um, and performing the role of Tamsun Donner in Howard Fishman’s jazz oratorio we are destroyed. She has also appeared in and composed for choreographer Daniel Burkholder’s Horizon Light, and premiered the role of Mimi in Bob Massey’s 2003 multimedia indie-rock opera The Nitrate Hymnal, produced jointly by Washington Performing Arts Society and Anti-Social Music, Inc. She recently appeared in Dixie Fun Dance Theater’s The Lonely, Post-Modern, Artsy-Fartsy Peep Show at Tribeca Cinemas in June 2009.

Oetgen earned a Master of Music in Vocal Performance, with a concentration in Latin American vocal repertoire, from the Catholic University of America in 1999, received a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant in 2007 for her research on the voice and military training, and was an Associate Artist under the mentorship of composer David Lang during an Atlantic Center for the Arts composition residency in April 2008. Susan/Likeness to Lily will be an Artist-in-Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center for the 2009-2010 season.

“Susan Oetgen brought a fresh approach to her orchestral composing during her residency with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Bazm-O-Razm for Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and Likeness to Lily was lyrical and poignant. It challenged our audience, both musically and emotionally.”

– Greg Pierson, Interim Executive Director, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Brooklyn, NY

“Singer Susan Oetgen, with the voice of a teardrop about to fall, has the ability to truly move her audience”

- Neke Carson, Curator of Events at The Gershwin Hotel, NYC

“Susan Oetgen's magical, classically trained voice makes her lyrics glisten with beauty like the dew on the tip of a leaf.”

- Ishrat Ansari, owner of Caffe Vivaldi, NYC

Photo by Z. Mangold