Researching Alice Shields

As a performer, Shields has been a professional opera singer, performing both traditional and modern roles with the New York City Opera, Metropolitan Opera At-The-Forum, Washington National Opera, Clarion Music Society, Wolf Trap Opera, the Lake George Opera Festival and other opera companies.

During the 1990s she intensively studied and performed South Indian Bharata Natyam dance-drama as a vocalist, performing nattuvangam, a form of South Indian rhythmic recitation with the Swati Bhise Bharata Natyam Dance Company, at venues including the United Nations, Asia Society and Wesleyan University. All Shields' compositions since 2000 reflect her immersion in Indian classical music and drama. Since 2016 Shields has been involved in the study of Noh theater.

Shields earned three degrees from Columbia University including the Doctor of Musical Arts in music composition, studying with Vladimir Ussachevsky, Jack Beeson, Otto Luening and Chou Wen-Chung. She served as Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Director for Development of the Columbia University Computer Music Center. She has taught the psychology of Music as Professor of Psychology at New York University and lectures on the psychology of music at institutions including the Santa Fe Opera, CUNY Center for Developmental Neuroscience, International Society for Research on Emotion, American Psychological Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

Shields' 2018 environmental opera "ZHAOJÜN - The Woman Who Saved the World" for soprano, baritone and seven instruments was performed in concert in November, 2018 by the Association for the Promotion of New Music at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City. In this opera, to end environmental destruction and create universal peace, Zhaojün steps out of ancient times into the 21st century to confront a character called The Emperor. Shields' 2010 feminist opera Criseyde is a radical re-write of Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and is sung in Middle English. It was performed in concert at the New York City Opera VOX Festival in May 2008.

Shields' work is published by the American Composers Alliance:, and is recorded on Koch International Classics, New World, CRI, American Composers Alliance Recordings, Tellus, Opus One and Albany Records.