John Aylward - Artistic Director
John Aylward’s music has been praised for its youthful energy and precision. Aylward’s debut album, featuring conductor Matthias Pintscher and soprano Jo Ellen Miller, will be released by Albany Records this spring. Aylward’s work entertains experimental harmonic and textural concepts while not sacrificing rigorous technique, lyricism or rhythmic vitality. Aylward’s music has been performed within the U.S and abroad by numerous ensembles including the New York New Music Ensemble, The East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, The Lydian String Quartet, Third Angle, The Bard Symphony Orchestra, Juventas, and The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble. His work has also been championed by internationally touring soloists Chris Finkel, Steven Gosling, Christopher Oldfather, Mark Holloway, Curtis Macomber, Samuel Solomon, Elizabeth Keusch, Karina Sabac and Daria Binkowski.
Aylward has received grants and awards for his compositions from numerous national institutions including the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Society of Composers. In 2007, Aylward won the Composition Prize from the International Society for Contemporary Music. In 2010, he was chosen as a Composer Apprentice by the National Centre for the Arts, Ottowa.
As a pianist, Aylward regularly performs contemporary music worldwide. Recent concert dates include Harvard’s Paine Hall, The Collis Center at Dartmouth, The American Composers Forum in Washington, DC, the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo, and Distler Hall at Tufts University.
In 2005, John began a group for contemporary music: the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble. In 2009, the group became a not-for-profit 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to presenting the most adventuresome new music worldwide. One of Aylward’s first initiatives for the group was to establish an international music festival. The Etchings Festival, now in its 3rd season, has attracted professional and student musicians from across the US and abroad and has already premiered numerous new works of contemporary music. The festival, held in Auvillar, France, has also attracted acclaim for its masterclasses and lessons, taught by guest composers such as David Rakowski, Fabien Levy and Louis Karchin.
In addition to composition and performance, Aylward is also an avid researcher in 20th Century American music. The spring 2010 edition of Perspectives of New Music features Aylward’s last research on Elliott Carter’s recent works. Other presentations on Elliott Carter’s music have been at the 2008 New England Conference of Music Theory, the 2008 American Innovator’s Series, and a colloquium at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland, where Aylward was a fellow during the summers of 2010 and 2008. In 2011, the Sacher Stiftung’s Mitteilungen will publish an upcoming article.
Aylward is currently Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Clark University in Massachusetts. Before his post at Clark, Aylward taught at Tufts University and at Brandeis University. John lives in Boston, Massachusetts and is originally from Tucson, Arizona.
