“A solo for Hospelhorn (Dances of the Black Sea by Füsun Köksal, 2013) followed—11 extraordinary minutes of breath and embouchure control becoming sounds of diaphanous sea spray, taut seagull calls, bitter wind, and spiral jetty spins. I don’t think I blinked through the whole thing. ”
Emma Hospelhorn is a musician whose creative practices resist easy categorization. As a flutist, she has been praised by the Chicago Classical Review for her “standout” and “joyful” performances; as a songwriter, her music has been hailed as “scintillating” by the Chicago Reader and “beguiling” by WNYC. She is flutist and Managing Director of Ensemble Dal Niente, with whom she has premiered and recorded works by composers including George Lewis, Hilda Paredes, Erin Gee, Jeff Parker, Igor Santos, Anthony Cheung, and many more. She writes and performs experimental folk music as Em Spel, and released her sophomore album, Bird or Snake, in March of 2026. She is one half of The Machine Is Neither…, an electroacoustic duo centered around motion-catpure technology, which has created works including Terra Lingua (2019/2020) for dancers in motion-capture suits and live instruments, and Tree of Secrets (2018) for audience and listening lamp.
Emma performs with a wide variety of improvising ensembles, folk, and pop groups, and additional collaborations include a working duo for instruments and homemade circuits with cellist Katinka Kleijn, as well as stints with Manual Cinema, the Neo-Futurists, Lookingglass Theatre, and Silk Road Rising. She is a co-founder of Musical Bridges to Memory, a musico-social intervention for people with dementia.
Recent performances include Theatro Sao Pedro in São Paulo, Brazil; Thalia Hall in Chicago; Big Ears Festival in Knoxville; the Walt Disney Concert Hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight; Forum for New Music Mexico City; the Library of Congress; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC. Emma is the recipient of a 2022 composer’s fellowship at the Eastern Frontier Foundation’s Norton Island Residency, a 2025 Individual Artist Grant from Chicago DCASE, and a 2025 Illinois Arts Council Grant.
Emma holds a PhD in Learning Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her research focuses on spatial and embodied learning in musical contexts. She also holds degrees from Columbia University and CUNY Queens College, and was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 2007-2009.