Ayers "Dance of the Mountain Raindrops"
televised on European TV
March 24, 2008. Jesse Ayers' Dance of the Mountain Raindrops for piano and string orchestra was broadcast in full today on Serbia's national television network, RTS. The performance featured concert pianist Dubravka Jovicic, Ph.D., of Belgrade, Serbia, and the RTS Symphony Orchestra.

Jovicic and the orchestra recorded Ayers' work in 1992 when it was selected for a then new RTS-TV series "World Premiere," a weekly program dedicated to premiering new concert works by living composers. Because war broke out about that time, it was a number of years before Ayers learned that his piece had been selected, recorded, and televised.

Ayers "Dancing King" on tour
March 2008. Professional tubist Kenyon Wilson will be performing Jesse Ayers' work for solo tuba and pre-recorded accompaniment track, The Dancing King. Wilson will be presenting solo recitals in Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carloina.

Wilson's first contact with Ayers' music was in 1991 when Wilson was a member of the famed Tennessee Tech Tuba-Euphonium Ensemble when it premiered Ayers' The Magical, Mystical Rain Forest, the other of Ayers' two works utilizing pre-recorded accompaniment track.

Wilson also toured with Ayers' "Dancing King" in October 2007 in Nebraska, South Dakata, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, and in March 2007 in New Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and Colorado.

"The Dancing King" is a musical depiction of ancient Isael's King David when he "danced before the Lord with all his might." (II Samuel 6: 14).

Ayers commissioned to compose new work
October 2007. Jesse Ayers has been commissioned to compose a new dedicatory anthem for the inauguration of the new president of Malone College, Dr. Gary Streit.

The new work opens and closes with Arise, My Soul, Arise, one of the new president's favorite hymns, and also includes "Rise Up O Men of God" and "God of Our Fathers."

The work is scored for the college's combined choirs, organ, piano, brass quintet, timpani, and surround-sound winds, and includes audience singing three times during the course of the work. Ayers has also included narration pertaining to the college's 1892 founders, J.Walter and Emma Malone, in recognition of this being the college's 50th anniversary on the Canton campus after the college relocated from Cleveland in 1957.

The premiere will be at the inauguration ceremony on October 26, 2007, at 2:00 p.m. at the Johnson Center for Worship and the Arts in Canton.

Ayers receives 16th award from ASCAP
September 2007. Jesse Ayers has been named a recipient of a 2007 Award from the Amercian Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. The awards are announced annually by ASCAP and are determined by a panel of distinguished experts. This is the 16th consecutive year that Ayers has been so honored by ASCAP.

Ayers receives Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award
March 26, 2007. Composer Jesse Ayers has been awarded a 2007 Individual Creativity Excellence Award by the Ohio Arts Council.

According to the Council, the cash awards are "peer recognition of [Ohio's] creative artists for the exceptional merit of a body of work that advances or exemplifies the discipline and the larger artistic community."

Artists' work is evaluated through an anonymous peer review process by an panel of out-of-state experts. The Council says that the highly competitive awards are only made to 8%-10% of applicants.

Of the forty or so applications received in the field of music compostion, only three awards were made. According to observers at the adjudication deliberations, which are open to the public, Ayers' music was the only music composition application to receive the maximum possible score from all judges on the music panel.

Ayers: major work on tour
March 2006. Jesse Ayers' newest composition, Jericho, will be performed on tour by the Wind Symphony of Corcordia University Chicago under the baton of Dr. Richard Fischer.

The 60 member ensemble will perform in St. Louis, Little Rock, Memphis, Peachtree City, GA, Pensacola, Mobile, Houstin, and Austin before their final home concert in Chicago.

Jericho is a dramatic, surround-sound composition for orchestra or band, plus narrator, that features unorthodox audience participation.

This is the second time that Fischer and the Concordia Wind Symphony have taken Ayers' music on tour. In March of 2000, they toured California with Ayers' ...and they gathered on Mount Carmel, a major 25-minute, three-movement work for wind orchestra based on the great Old Testament contest between Elijah and the false prophets of Baal.

Ayers music performed at national conference
October 2005. Jesse Ayers' music has been selected to be performed at the national conference of the Society of Composers, hosted by the University of North Carolina Greensboro. His composition, The Fire of the Living God, will be performed by the UNCG Wind Ensemble under the baton of of Dr. John Locke, President of the American Bandmasters Association.