Biography
Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s music has been described as detailed, colourful, precise, witty, fluid and engaging. HIs pieces have been performed across the world and recorded in Abbey Road and Maida Vale Studios by ensembles and musicians including The BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra’s (Music of Today), the Royal Academy Soloists, the Isobel Griffiths Session Orchestra, the BBC Singers, Ensemble Amorpha, Ensemble Konvergence, the Cappa Ensemble, Painting Music, Paul Silverthorne, Peter Gregson, Naoko Miyamoto, Dave Worswick and Sasha Calin, and has featured on BBC Radio 3’s “Hear and Now” programme.
Aaron is currently in residence with the BBC Symphony Orchestra through the Sound and Music ’Embedded‘ scheme. Aaron’s new orchestral work, The Deeper Breath to Follow, will be workshopped in March/April 2013, then performed and recorded for broadcast in November 2013. Aaron was commissioned to write a new wind quintet, How to avoid huge ships, for the 2nd New Dots concert (London, May 2013) and is currently working with the Dr. K. Sextet (’13 Cheltenham Composers Academy), Harperc (’13 Etchings Festival) and is writing a new clarinet quintet for Tim Orpen (a Britten Pears and RVW Trust Commission).
In 2012, Aaron was selected as a pilot participant on the London Symphony Orchestra ‘Soundhub’ scheme. Recent commissions include Plainer Sailing, for the Riot Ensemble (LSO Discovery Concert), Le campane che Svaniscono, for the highSCORE Festival (Pavia, Italy), and the faultlines of prayer for Ensemble Konvergence (Vienna & Prague; Nov. 2011). A full-length recording project of Aaron’s music at Abbey Road Studios resulted in the CD Towards A Poorer Light, released in 2009 and available from the composer.
Aaron’s past work includes a full length feature film score (for which he conducted the recording sessions at Abbey Road Studios) for The Poet, which headlined and won the 2007 Staten Island Film Festival (June ’07), was chosen for the closing night of the 2007 Boston Film Festival, and was privately screened during the UK Jewish Film Festival. Something More Than Light which was given more than a dozen performances at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Breathless for Naoko Miyamoto’s recital in Queen Elizabeth Hall; Skin and Bones, for Ensemble Amorpha and Non-classical, The River’s Daughter, a short-opera written with librettist Sasha Dugdale (directed by Natalie Abrahami) at Aldeburgh for the Jerwood Opera Writing Programme; Night Mist for Daniel Cohen and the Eden Chamber Orchestra (awarded a 2007 BMI Student Composer Award); Simple Dances Inspired by Morning for David Worswick and Neil Georgeson (awarded the 2007 Alan Bush Prize), and for reasons, perhaps to do with sorrow for solo cello. Aaron was the Student Union President at the Royal Academy of Music for the 2007-08 Academic Year.
Aaron received his DMus in Composition in December 2012 from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he has studied with Julian Anderson on a full scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust. Previously, Aaron received his MMus in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, with Philip Cashian, and his BM in Musical Composition and an Ad-Hoc BM in Orchestral Conducting from Northwestern University. His primary composition instructors at Northwestern were Augusta Read Thomas, and Dr. Amy Williams, and his primary conducting teachers were Dr. Stephen Alltop and Dr. Mallory Thompson.
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