Reviews & Quotes

A few years ago, our school took part in a consortium and Jocelyn wrote Self Talk.  This had a tremendous impact in both musical growth and human artistic content, and the children were absolutely riveted by this piece of music.  I jumped at the opportunity to purchase another piece for mixed chorus that was suitable for the changing voice.  Big thanks to Jocelyn and all of you (Graphite) creating and supporting high quality artistic music in a moment in time where there are those who do not care or wish to see such things disappear.  Please keep striving – we must all endeavor to keep the candles of artistic expression lit.

Edward Grimes, Spring Garden Waldorf School Teacher in OH

Jocelyn’s music ties so beautifully with the text, which for singers, makes her music a reward and a clear way to connect emotionally to the message. Her pieces are more than just singable lyric lines; they invoke a desire to connect to the audience and be a part of a bigger experience for everyone.

David Walton, tenor
davidwaltontenor.com

Jocelyn’s music sings. It is crafty and crafted but never difficult; lyrical and poignant yet never saccharin. Her musical lines flow as poetry in sound, as she guides the listener from one delight to the next.

Domonic DiOrio
Associate Professor of Music, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music | Director, NOTUS: IU Contemporary Vocal Ensemble

Jocelyn’s music is filled with new impressions of texture and color. Individual lines melding together to create deep or expansive melodies. Our ensemble loved not only the rehearsal process, but found repeated performances to deepen our experience and expression of the music.

I have had the great pleasure of working with Jocelyn on two different commissions. As a conductor, I have found no other composer more collaborative in the creation of a work. Jocelyn was interested in my thoughts, wanted to hear about the rehearsal process, and even joined us in residency! She was engaging and encouraging each time she worked with the musicians. Her talent as a composer, high expectations for performance, and warm personality are blended with her energy and excitement to help draw the performers into her work.

Peter Haberman, Director of Bands
Concordia College, Moorhead

Jocelyn Hagen’s music celebrates the eternal spirit of the feminine, informed by soaring poetry and the indomitable courage of women. Her sense of place, time and the elements weave together a fabric of sound that inspires awe, joy, and the resilience so needed in today’s world.

Iris S. Levine, Founder and Artistic Director
Vox Femina Los Angeles

…in my favorite moment, the dancer Corbin, his eyes closed, joined in a flight of percussion that began with his feet and pattered up his body to a soft hollow grasp in air. Garbed in tailored trunks, tanks, and a spangled swim cap for Freeh (the whole, the creation of Tulle & Dye, reminiscent of a 1920s bathing costume), the dancers seemed not quite conscious of the musicians, who moved around them, watching them, calling to them with Hagen’s music—soulful plucks, sighings, and a shivery groan-singing, never quite words.

I read them as past and present: the present inchoate, longing to speak to the past, which remains strictly etched, strange, sometimes wrenched (in Freeh’s angular steps). 

Lightsey Darst, MN Artists, ‘Here & After’ and ’Slippery Fish’: the week in local dance

Ms. Hagen’s work is unique in multiple ways: the inventive music, the subject matter’s perspective, and the way in which she has the wind players participate vocally by whispering, talking, even crying out at times. There is a moment in the work when one female wind player calls out, “Can you even see me?!”

Can. you. even. see. me. …

Given my experience as a female, this phrase, in the larger context of asking it of the world, resonated so vividly in me.

Molly Fillmore, Reflection- Lessons from Medusa (June 2025)

Reviews of Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci