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Teaching alongside my Ecce colleagues, Isabel Mundry and Raphael Cendo last week at the Goethe Institute. Eight fellows from around the world joined us for readings of their work, lessons and masterclasses. Read more here. Thanks so much to the Goethe Institute, Harvard, New England Conservatory and the French Consulate for their support!

Isabel, Raphael and Ecce conductor Ryan McAdams working with a workshop fellow

Ecce violinist Karen Kim speaking on extended techniques. Isabel and Raphael contribute.

Isabel and Raphael at the reading session.

Raphael and Isabel

Anne Schreffler from Harvard Speaks with Raphael and Isobel

Ecce After Performing Raphael’s Rokh

Thanks to everyone who made Etchings 2014 so special. Working with you all was an unbelievable pleasure and I feel lucky to have had another great summer. Special thanks to Mark Andre and Garth Knox for being extraordinary people and amazing musicians.

Ecce working with participant Gyorgi Dmitrov.

Ecce Ensemble Rehearsing

Ravi, Derek and Ethan working with Garth Knox.

Garth in Masterclass

Serafim giving a toast for the Saurraut’s–one of our hosts.

Festival Lawn

Festival Lawn

Garth in Masterclass

Mark Andre in Masterclass

After a concert

Jean-Philippe and Jay

Mark Andre and Garth Knox

Jay, Serafim and John

Jay with our two assistants: Kinga and…Kinga

Dinner at the Saurraut’s

Leonardo and Derek

Julien, Wes and Sean

Serafim, Garth and Szymon

Jay and Jean-Philippe

Last night in Auvillar. Jean-Philippe, Wes and Tristan

Looking forward to working with Beat Furrer, GarthKnox, and a group of great young composers at Etchings this summer. And so excited to be with some truly remarkable performers. Before we set out, you can catch the premiere of Ephemera at the Ivry-sur-Seine in Paris on June 28th, 8:30PM. If you’re in Paris next week, please come by!

Hear the New York premiere of Mercury at the DiMenna Center. May 15th. There will be a 7PM reception with the composers and the concert starts at 8PM. This is Ecce’s final event of the season before they set off for the Etchings Festival in France.

Tonight, the London Symphony Orchestra’s Soundhub broadcasts Aura.
Listen to the complete broadcast here. Aylward’s work begins at 7:10.

Aura is now available at Composers Edition

I’m honored that my music will be featured this year at the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento by the Empyrean Ensemble.

Sounds like it will be fascinating festival and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. For the complete concert schedule, click here.

Last week, the ensemble Riot gave two amazing performances of my ensemble work, Aura. This is a top class ensemble. Not only excellent players, but a great dynamic and very professional work ethic. The rehearsals were a joy and the piece sounded great from the get go. It was a pleasure to work on refined details and interpretation. And the performances were just full of life and nuance. I can’t recommend the group enough. Some pictures below of my time with the group, and I’ll post a recording as soon as possible.

Rehearsing with Riot

Rehearsing with Riot

Charis, Max and Kate, Before the Concert

Sietse-Jan and Charis

The Forge–A Great New Music Venue in London

Outside the Venue in Brighton

The Beach at Brighton

Thanks to all who made possible such a beautiful event at Harvard last Tuesday! Below, you can hear the piece and read the text and program note. For all interested, I highly recommend the poetry of Dean Young. His work is full of music!

I Saw My Life Go By in the Coyote’s Jaws

Sharon Harms, soprano; Camila Barrientos, clarinet; Hassan Anderson, oboe;
Yohanan Chendler, violin; Serafim Smigelskiy, cello

Jeffrey Means, conductor

Note:

Much of Dean Young’s poetry finds moments of inspiration in the mundane. The voices in Young’s poems struggle with daily life and are often caught off guard by the epiphanies it can reveal. Young’s character’s marvel at the idiosyncratic passage of time, similar to the way music has the ability to change our temporal perception. Young’s play with words and striking contrasts also lend his work to musical interpretations. My setting attempts to capture the elusive bubbling of creativity that wells up from the unconscious of Young’s many voices.

Last Saturday, Sound Icon gave an amazing premiere of my latest chamber work Flight out of Mind. The work is challenging and Jeffrey Means conducted it beautifully. I’m grateful for my collaboration with this excellent group. Thanks for all involved! To read more about the concert and my piece, here is a wonderful review of the event by the Boston Musical Intelligencer:

“The first movement’s surface-level motives—doppleresque “musical gestures that evoke sensations of flight,” —belied the subtlety of the underlying counterpoint. It was this counterpoint that gracefully drove the movement from an opening with detailed, busy polyphony to a homorhythmic texture over a drone at the electrifying end. This kind of compositional eloquence comes only from a combination of discipline and intuitive formal mastery. After a lighter and ethereal central movement, the finale presented a series of thundering crescendos, the last of which was poetically marked by the gradual decay of an isolated residual tone. In all, the symphonic scale of the piece just seemed to bulge at the restraints that the chamber genre placed upon it.”

–BMI