Jesse Ayers Receives Governor's Award for Outstanding Individual Artist
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January 2020. The Ohio Arts Council has announced that composer Jesse Ayers has been named the recipient of the Governor's Award for an Individual Artist for 2020.
The Governor’s Awards "showcase and celebrate exceptional Ohio artists, arts organizations, arts leaders and patrons, and business support for the arts. Award recipients will be presented with the only arts award in the state that is conferred by the governor."
Donna S. Collins, Executive Director of the Ohio Arts Council, says, "The Governor's Awards are a special opportunity to celebrate Ohioans who exemplify what it means to make a difference through the power of the arts."
Each year, the public is invited to nominate individuals and organizations. Recipients are selected by the Governor's Awards Selection Committee, composed of six Ohio Arts Council (OAC) board members and three members selected by the Ohio Citizens for the Arts (OCA) Foundation, who recommend winners after reviewing nominations and letters of support submitted by individuals and organizations across Ohio.
"I am humbled to receive this award," says Ayers, "and grateful that our Governor, legislators, arts patrons, and good people of Ohio recognize the transformative power of the arts in our communities. In that sense, I receive this award on behalf of all Ohioans working to create and promote the arts."
Ayers continues, "I have been very fortunate and so blessed over my career to have had the opportunity to work with so many outstanding musicians, both professionals and students, all wonderful human beings, who have been diligent to perform my music at a high level. Composing is done in solitary confinement, locked away with pencil and staff paper. But the performance of the resulting music is marvelously collaborative, when I get to work side-by-side with 50, 100, even 200 highly skilled musicians coming 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, professionalism, and musicianship of the conductors and performers who have brought my music to life in the concert hall."
Ayers was the winner of the inaugural American Prize for Composition in 2011 for his work The Passion of John Brown for orchestra and narrator, commissioned by Christopher Wilkins and Akron Symphony; co-winner of the 2011 Dayton Ballet “New Music for New Dance" competition; and winner of the 2016 Opera Kansas Zepick Modern Opera Composition Competition for his two-woman, one-act opera, Beneath Suspicion, commissioned by Soprani Compagni (Lisa Dawson, Tammie Huntington, and Phoenix Park-Kim). Most recently, Ayers was named the 2019 Ohio Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer of the Year. He has received citations from the Ohio House and Senate for "tremendous attainment."
The Governor's Award will be presented at a luncheon in Columbus on March 25.
Below: Ayers' music performed by the Akron Symphony and Chorus (left), and the Malone University Symphonic Band and Chorale (right).
The Governor’s Awards "showcase and celebrate exceptional Ohio artists, arts organizations, arts leaders and patrons, and business support for the arts. Award recipients will be presented with the only arts award in the state that is conferred by the governor."
Donna S. Collins, Executive Director of the Ohio Arts Council, says, "The Governor's Awards are a special opportunity to celebrate Ohioans who exemplify what it means to make a difference through the power of the arts."
Each year, the public is invited to nominate individuals and organizations. Recipients are selected by the Governor's Awards Selection Committee, composed of six Ohio Arts Council (OAC) board members and three members selected by the Ohio Citizens for the Arts (OCA) Foundation, who recommend winners after reviewing nominations and letters of support submitted by individuals and organizations across Ohio.
"I am humbled to receive this award," says Ayers, "and grateful that our Governor, legislators, arts patrons, and good people of Ohio recognize the transformative power of the arts in our communities. In that sense, I receive this award on behalf of all Ohioans working to create and promote the arts."
Ayers continues, "I have been very fortunate and so blessed over my career to have had the opportunity to work with so many outstanding musicians, both professionals and students, all wonderful human beings, who have been diligent to perform my music at a high level. Composing is done in solitary confinement, locked away with pencil and staff paper. But the performance of the resulting music is marvelously collaborative, when I get to work side-by-side with 50, 100, even 200 highly skilled musicians coming 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, professionalism, and musicianship of the conductors and performers who have brought my music to life in the concert hall."
Ayers was the winner of the inaugural American Prize for Composition in 2011 for his work The Passion of John Brown for orchestra and narrator, commissioned by Christopher Wilkins and Akron Symphony; co-winner of the 2011 Dayton Ballet “New Music for New Dance" competition; and winner of the 2016 Opera Kansas Zepick Modern Opera Composition Competition for his two-woman, one-act opera, Beneath Suspicion, commissioned by Soprani Compagni (Lisa Dawson, Tammie Huntington, and Phoenix Park-Kim). Most recently, Ayers was named the 2019 Ohio Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer of the Year. He has received citations from the Ohio House and Senate for "tremendous attainment."
The Governor's Award will be presented at a luncheon in Columbus on March 25.
Below: Ayers' music performed by the Akron Symphony and Chorus (left), and the Malone University Symphonic Band and Chorale (right).
