About / Artist’s Statement
My overarching goal as a composer is to write music that touches the human spirit, the human heart. To facilitate this, I have worked to develop a musical style that is broadly accessible without sacrificing the capacity to express depth of emotion.
Much of my music is quite dramatic and deals with core life issues: purpose, destiny, faith, overcoming adversity, courage under fire – always with the themes of hope, reconciliation, and restoration. Rahab and Beneath Suspicion are examples of these.
But some of my music is the polar opposite: music meant to be fun, cheery, with bright harmonies and energetic syncopations, pieces such as Shinkansen, The Dancing King, and Waldstein Express.
Composing is done in solitary confinement, locked away with pencil and staff paper. But the performance of the resulting music is marvelously collaborative, where I get to work side-by-side with 50, 100, even 200 highly skilled musicians who come together, in community, to focus on a single goal, that of creating a meaningful, perhaps life-altering, experience for their fellow human beings in the audience.
On many occasions, I have experienced the deep gratification of seeing audience members respond to my music with profound, heart-felt emotion, thanks to the dedication and musicianship of the conductors and performers who have brought my music to life in the concert hall.
Bio
JESSE AYERS was the winner of the inaugural American Prize for Composition in 2011 and winner of the first Opera Kansas Zepick Modern Opera Composition Competition in 2016. His music has been performed in Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Portugal, the Republic of Srpska, and more than 100 U.S. cities.
Other honors include the 2020 Governor’s Award for Ohio’s Outstanding Individual Artist, the 2019 Ohio Music Teachers Association Composer of the Year Commission, two Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Awards, the 2011 Dayton Ballet “New Music for New Dance” award, and a MacDowell Fellowship. Ayers was in the first class of composers named “Honored Artists” of the American Prize. His music has twice been selected to represent the United States at the prestigious World Music Days festival.
Ayers’ works have been performed by the Akron Symphony, the Michigan Philharmonic, the Yakima Symphony, the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Bend Symphony, the Susquehanna Symphony, the Brantford Symphony (Canada), the Marble City Opera, Opera Kansas, Soprani Compagni, the Tennessee Wind Symphony, the Windiana Concert Band, and university bands and orchestras around the country.
His commissions include those from the University of Dayton Symphonic Wind Ensemble, the Akron Symphony, the Indiana Bandmasters Association, the Ohio Music Teachers Association, Soprani Compagni, the Milligan College Orchestra, the Michigan City Municipal Band, the Ohio Private Colleges Honors Band, and the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod National Honors Band.
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 God in the affairs of the human race. Common themes in his music are hope, reconciliation, renewal, and restoration. Ayers holds the rank of Professor of Music Emeritus at Malone University, where he was twice awarded the school’s Distinguished Faculty Award.
Downloadable Hi-Res Press Photo
