Program Biography

AARON JAY KERNIS, winner of the coveted 2002 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and one of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation. His music figures prominently on orchestral, chamber, and recital programs around the world and been commissioned by many of America's foremost performing artists, including soprano Renee Fleming, violinists Joshua Bell, Pamela Frank, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and guitarist Sharon Isbin, and by such institutions as the New York Philharmonic (for its 150^th Anniversary), San Francsico Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, American Public Radio, Birmingham Bach Choir, Aspen Music Festival, Los Angeles and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York's American Museum of Natural History. Mr. Kernis was one of two composers chosen by Disney to mark the millennium with a momentous choral symphony. Recent commissions include his Toy Piano Concerto for Margaret Leng Tan the Singapore Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra for the opening of the Kimmel Center, and a work for the Dale Warland Singers. Upcoming commissions include his first opera, based on the prize-winning book Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, for the 50^th anniversary of Santa Fe Opera, and a violin concerto for Midori to celebrate her 20 years as a performer. His music is available on CRI, Nonesuch, Phoenix, New Albion and Argo.