Aaron Jay Kernis

Aaron Jay Kernis ( born January 15, 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ) is a major contemporary composer. He studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at Yale University under John Adams, Jacob Druckman, Morton Subotnick, and Charles Wuorinen.

Life

Kernis began his musical career with the study of violin and piano. The influence of this first encounter with the music is reflected in later compositions, where he both in the orchestra as a solo instrument often can be of particular importance especially the stringed instruments. At age 13, he began composing at 16, he won the first of three BMI Student Composer Awards, an award for young composers. Meanwhile, Kernis is an active and very popular composer who works among others for the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra; In addition, he is employed as a consultant for modern music in the Minnesota Orchestra.

Work

For his chamber music work he received in 1993 along with Nicholas Maw the Stoeger Prize. His most important works are recent and others of the New Era Dance, his second string musica instrumentalis ( for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1998 received ), Colored Field for English Horn and Orchestra ( which him the 2002 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition earned ), and his Symphony in Waves.