About

Cody Criswell (Criswell-Badillo) (b. 1988) is a composer, percussionist, and guitarist. His music is informed by his experiences growing up in rural southwestern Oklahoma and West Texas, the ten years he spent roughnecking in the oilfields of Texas and the Midwest, and the collision of his self-taught musical beginnings with his conservatory education. His music deals with the American Southwest, the working class, rural poverty, and his complicated relationship with his Texas cowboy, Tejano, and Indigenous Coahuiltecan heritage.

Currently, Criswell-Badillo is completing an evening-length work titled A Rural Requiem for Southern Methodist University in collaboration with the 100W Corsicana Artist & Writer Residency. Drawing on Texan folk traditions, it balances themes of small-town decline and the diseases of despair with threads of hope and resilience.

He has also collaborated with Alarm Will Sound, OMNIBUS Ensemble, the Baltimore Guitar Duo, and Duo Avanzando. Recent projects include commissions from the Victory Players at the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of the Johns Hopkins University and the National Music Teachers Association.

Criswell-Badillo is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oklahoma. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and four children.