“We hear brilliant energetic rhythmic figures…imaginative sonorities
and harmonies that always move, always inflect. Also striking are the
zones of suspended motion and otherworldly calm”
— American Academy of Arts and Letters
Mr. Aylward's music comprises solo works, chamber music, orchestral works and music for film and multimedia. Aylward grew up in the Sonoran Desert on the border of Arizona and Mexico. A child of an immigrant mother from Germany, herself a World War II refugee, much of his early life included periods of struggle and economic instability. His music processes the impacts that earlier life — filled with a deep sense of community, rich expressions of converging cultural histories and the otherworldly landscapes of the desert — had on him today.
Aylward has been recognized by the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Foundation (through which he received a grant to travel and do work in Germany), the MacDowell Colony, Tanglewood, the Aspen Music School, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the International Society for Contemporary Music (where he was awarded first prize), and many other organizations.