“We hear brilliant energetic rhythmic figures…imaginative sonorities
and harmonies that always move, always inflect. Also striking are the
zones of suspended motion and otherworldly calm”— American Academy of Arts and Letters
The Boston Globe has described Aylward’s music as being “delicate and deep, all at once”, and Gramophone has called Aylward’s music “mysterious, iridescent and daring”. The Canadian new music review Textura remarked that Aylward’s recent monodrama Angelus was “gripping music of a high order”, and that, “the manner by which Aylward conjoins his vocal and instrumental elements in the work sometimes calls to mind Berg’s handling of orchestration in Wozzeck and Lulu.”
Aylward’s recent awards and fellowships include those from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, MacDowell, Tanglewood, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, First Prize from the International Society for Contemporary Music, and many others. More about John’s music can be found at johnaylward.com.
John grew up in the Sonoran Desert on the border of Arizona and Mexico, a child of an immigrant mother from Germany (herself a World War II refugee) and in circumstances of both tremendous diversity and economic instability. His music reflects the rich expressions of converging cultural histories and the deeply interwoven communities of that earlier life, all within the otherworldly landscapes of the desert. After initial piano and composition studies with Nicholas Zumbro and Pamela Decker, John studied music composition in New England with Martin Boykan and David Rakowski and wrote a dissertation on Elliott Carter’s 5th String Quartet with musicologist Eric Chafe with the support of two residential fellowships from the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. While completing his studies, Aylward founded the Etchings Festival in Auvillar, France, which continues today in the U.S.
