Jesse Ayers
JESSE AYERS is winner of the 2011 American Prize for Orchestral Composition, co-winner of the 2011 Dayton Ballet 'New Music for New Dance,' and a 2010 MacDowell Fellowship. His music has been performed in Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, and over 100 U.S. cities. Much of Ayers' 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.
Ayers wins 2011 American Prize for Orchestral Compostion
May 16, 2011. The American Prize has announced that Jesse Ayers' The Passion of John Brown has been named winner of the 2011 American Prize for Orchestral Composition. The American Prize is a series of national non-profit competitions in the performing arts which provides reward and recognition to the finest composers, conductors and ensembles in America. Ayers' work was commissioned by the Akron Symphony Orchestra to commemorate the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Brown was a resident of Akron. The work was premiered October 17, 2009 — 150 years to the day of Brown's raid — by the Akron Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Wilkins conducting, and Broadcasters Hall of Fame inductee Leon Bibb, narrating.