Murphy Severtson (they/them) is a performance artist, composer, and teaching artist. Their art is fascinated by religion, traditions, queer joy and despair, climate change, Florida, women, crustaceans, breath, repetition, and care. This art is often sung, accordion-ed, and improvised.

They are a member of Mirage Auto Depot,  a founding member of the Mosaic Composers Collective, and often write and perform with George Landau-Pincus.
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Murphy works as a teaching artist at the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers Program, Little Orchestra, and Opera on Tap. They also work as an assistant and grant writer for Paul Pinto and Gelsey Bell.

Their music has been performed by the Rhythm Method, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the St. Olaf Band, at Lincoln Center, the Dimenna Center, and National Sawdust.

They studied with Timothy Mahr, Yan Pang, JC Sanford, and Justin Merritt at St. Olaf, graduating summa cum laude in 2022. Murphy studies with Valerie Coleman and Alyssa Weinberg at the Mannes College of Music at the New School.



"With an accordion that felt like an additional limb, Severtson moved slowly with the tension of someone who lives in between self-assuredness and self-doubt... When they stretched the accordion as far as it could go and it sloughed off of their shoulders like a jacket, it felt at once like loss, longing, and liberation. The work was a stunning meditation on what happens when movement and music merge within one performer." - Hannah Lieberman, Dance Enthusiast.