Aaron Jay Kernis

This composer has multiple commissions - click here to view all.

Title: Chamber Concerto (subject to change)
Commission: 2023

Title: Songs of Innocents (Book II)
Commission: 1989
Completed: 1990

Instrumentation: high voice and piano
Premiere Location:
Premiere Ensemble:
Notes: Written for Dawn Upshaw.

Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis draws artistic inspiration from a vast 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). Among the most esteemed musical figures of our time, he is dedicated to creating music which can be meaningful to people’s lives, through its abundance of expression, intensity, dynamism and humor. His music has been heard on major stages globally, performed by many of the world’s foremost artists and institutions, including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco, Melbourne, Dallas and Toronto Symphonies, and Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, soprano Renee Fleming, violinists James Ehnes and Joshua Bell, guitarists Sharon Isbin and Jason Vieaux, the New York and London Philharmonics, Philadelphia Orchestra, Walt Disney Company, BBC, Toronto and San Francisco Symphonies. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is an inductee of the Classical Music Hall of Fame and has won the coveted Grawemeyer and Nemmers Awards in Music Composition, in addition to the Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2 ("musica instrumentalis"), a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for his Violin Concerto and three Grammy nominations. His works have been recorded widely, and he and his work are the subject of Leta Miller's biography, published by the University of Illinois Press. Since 2003 he has taught composition at Yale School of Music.