- Aaron Jay Kernis was born on January 15, 1960 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Aaron Jay is a composer, known for One Last Dance (2003), My Mother's Smile (2002) and Les chemins immobiles (2006).
- Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for music for "String Quartet n°2 (musica instrumentalis)"
Won a Diapason d'or Award in 1997 for "Best Contemporary Music Disc of the year" ("Symphony No. 2", "Invisible Mosaic III," and "Musica celestis" by Hugh Wolff and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra)
Graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Manhattan and Yale Schools of Music, working with composers as diverse as John Adams, Charles Wuorinen and Jacob Druckman.
In 2002, received the coveted Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition for the cello and orchestra version of "Colored Field"
Won the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, an NEA grant, a Bearns Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award, and three BMI Student Composer Awards.
New Music Advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra since 1998 - Began his musical studies on the violin; at the age of twelve he began teaching himself piano and, in the following year, composition.
- One of the things I'm really grateful for about growing up when I did was both this wide ranging exposure and the encouragement of that in high school. I came to New York City at a time when stylistic boundaries were breaking down... The first pieces of David Del Tredici, the emergence of minimalism - in a way my acceptance of everything was already prepared for me by the exposure I had in high school and earlier.
- Back when I left school (I was 23 at that time), and mentally even before that, I made the commitment to do whatever it took to live my life as a composer and not teach at any university for the sake of a steady salary. I was afraid - and I think I was right - that I would not have enough time. I'm amazed at the composers who do have time to both, like Chris Rouse. Others just wait until summer and make an uneasy peace with that. It's not that I don't enjoy teaching. I love contact with young composers and seeing them develop. But if I'm to be a role model, the best thing I can do is to try to write the best music I can. I became very used to living on nothing - and not expecting, but hoping I could be comfortable enough to keep going.
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