About/Bio
JESSE AYERS' music has been performed in Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, and over 100 U.S. cities, and has twice been selected by the to represent the United States at the prestigious World Music Days festival. Much of his music is scored for large, "surround-sound" forces and explores the intersection of the spiritual and natural worlds and the redemptive intervention of a very real God in the affairs of the human race. His Jericho for large wind orchestra and narrator reportedly stunned audiences during its 2005-06 premiere season with its unorthodox audience participation, surround-sound effects, and spiritual-emotional impact.
But there is also a fun-loving side to the music of this split-personality composer, seen in pieces like Waldstein Express, The Dancing King, and Caribbean Fantasy on Joy to the World, music filled with energy, rhythmic syncopations, bright, cheerful harmonies, and which are meant to be just plain fun.
Ayers' music has been heard over KSTP-TV (ABC affiliate Minneapolis/St. Paul), WKSU-FM (Kent, OH), WUOT-FM (Knoxville, TN), and his Dance of the Mountain Raindrops for piano and orchestra has been broadcast numerous times on television and radio over the European network RTS. He has been awarded the Individual Creativity Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council as well as 16 awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), grants from Meet the Composer and the American Music Center, and Malone University's Distinguished Faculty Award. He has been a guest composer on university campuses in California, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Born in East Tennessee, Ayers began composing around age 14, and while still in high school conducted one of his own works with the University of Tennessee Band. Ayers earned the bachelor's and master's degrees in Music Composition from the University of Tennessee where he studied composition with David Van Vactor and choral conducting with Donald Neuen. He also holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition from the University of Kentucky. Ayers has had master classes with composers Sven-David Sandstrom, Karel Husa, Norman Dello Joio, and Vaclav Nelhybel. Among his former students are Jennifer Higdon , winner of the2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music; Michael Figueroa, winner of the 2002 BMI-John Lennon Song Writing Contest; Robert Cantrell of the Balitmore Opera, Palmer Williams, who tours with Tyler Perry; and Dave Douglas, former drummer with Reliant K. Ayers is a senior professor at Malone University in Canton, Ohio.
Short bio
JESSE AYERS' (b. Knoxville, TN 1951) music has been performed in Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, and over 100 U.S. cities, and has twice been selected by the to represent the United States at the prestigious World Music Days festival. He began composing around age 14, and while still in high school conducted one of his own works with the University of Tennessee Symphonic Band. He earned the bachelor's (cum laude) and master's degrees from the University of Tennessee and the Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Kentucky. Since 1997, he has taught at Malone University in Canton, Ohio, where he has received the school's Distinguished Faculty Award. His other awards include the 2007 Individual Creativity Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, sixteen awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, and grants from Meet The Composer and the American Music Center. He has been a guest composer on university campuses in California, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Much of his music is scored for large, "surround-sound" forces and explores the intersection of the spiritual and natural worlds and the redemptive intervention of a very real God in the affairs of the human race.