Prof. Aaron Jay Kernis (USA)
Yale School of Music

Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize and Grammy award-winning composer, draws artistic inspiration from a vast and often surprising palette of sources woven into the tapestry of a musical language of rich lyric splendor, vivid poetic imagery, and fierce instrumental brilliance. He has been praised for his "fearless originality [and] powerful voice" (The New York Times). He is dedicated to creating music that can be meaningful to people's lives, through its expressive intensity and abundance of expression.

His music has appeared on major stages worldwide, performed and commissioned by many of America's foremost artists, including the New York and London Philharmonics; Philadelphia Orchestra; San Francisco, BBC, St Louis, Dallas, Toronto, Singapore, and Melbourne (AU) Symphonies; Los Angeles, Orpheus, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras; Walt Disney Company; Yale's Schola Cantorum; Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York's American Museum of Natural History; Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; a series of works for Tippet Rise Art Center; a piece for the San Francisco Girls and Brooklyn Youth Choruses with The Knights for the New York Philharmonic Biennial; the Jasper and Borromeo Quartets and soloists including Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and guitarists Sharon Isbin and Jason Vieaux; concerti for violinist James Ehnes, cellist Joshua Roman, violist Paul Neubauer, and flutist Marina Piccinini. He scored and produced a film, Elegy (for those we lost), with filmmaker Esther Shubinski for victims of COVID-19 and their families. Upcoming are: a concerto for pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet; works for guitarist David Tannenbaum, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, Sandbox Percussion with soprano Hila Plitmann; and for mezzo and orchestra for Donald

His works have been recorded on Nonesuch, Koch, Onyx, Naxos, Signum, Cedille, Virgin, and Argo, with which Mr. Kernis had an exclusive recording contract, and many other labels. Recent recordings include his works for flute with Marina Piccinini and conductors Marin Alsop and Leonard Slatkin with the Peabody Symphony and his Grammy-award-winning violin concerto for James Ehnes with Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony.

As one of America's most honored composers, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an inductee of the Classical Music Hall of Fame. He has also won the coveted Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and Nemmers Award. He was the Workshop Director of the Nashville Symphony Composer Lab and, for 15 years, served as New Music Adviser to the Minnesota Orchestra, with which he co-founded and directed its Composer Institute for 11 years.

Kernis teaches composition at Yale School of Music. Leta Miller's book-length portrait of Kernis and his work was published by the University of Illinois Press as part of its American Composer series.