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

Winner of two 2019 Grammy Awards (including “Best Contemporary Classical Composition” for his violin concerto for James Ehnes), a Pulitzer Prize, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and Nemmers Award, Aaron Jay Kernis is one of America’s most performed and honored composers.   

His music appears prominently on concert programs worldwide, and he has been commissioned by America’s preeminent performing organizations and artists, including the New York and Royal Liverpool Philharmonics, San Francisco, Detroit, Seattle, Saint Louis, Toronto, and Melbourne (AU) Symphonies, Los Angeles and Saint Paul Chamber and Minnesota Orchestras, Walt Disney Company, The Knights, San Francisco Girls, and Brooklyn Youth Choruses, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and soloists James Ehnes, Marina Piccinini, Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and Sharon Isbin to name a few.       

His works have been recorded on Nonesuch, Naxos, Phoenix, Onyx, Signum, Virgin, Cedille, and Argo, with which Mr. Kernis had an exclusive recording contract and many other labels. Recent albums include David Tanenbaum’s disc of guitar concertos featuring three of his works; the Nashville Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero featuring his fourth Symphony; his third string quartet (“River”) as part of the Jasper Quartet’s The Kernis Project; and Elegy…for those we lost arranged for harpist Yolanda Kondonassis and Michael Sachs. 

He is 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 and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Classical Music Hall of Fame. Leta Miller’s book-length portrait of Kernis and his work was published by University of Illinois Press as part of its American Composer series.