Photo by Peter Shin

Aaron Israel Levin writes music that is guided by the emotional dynamism of storytelling and drama. He draws from a variety of musical and non-musical influences – including film, theater, and performance art – to create compositions that are both personal and wide-ranging. Aaron’s music has been performed by the American Composers Orchestra, the Bent Frequency Duo, the Chelsea Symphony, Fifth House Ensemble, loadbang, the Yale Philharmonia, mezzo-sopranos Kayleigh Butcher and Lisa Neher, and percussionists Dmitrii Nilov and Sam Um.
 
Passionate about collaboration, Aaron frequently works with artists from a wide variety mediums. He has collaborated multiple times with playwright Christopher Gabriel Nuñéz, and has developed projects with projection designer Johnny Moreno, filmmaker Harris Gurney, and choreographers Celeste Miller and Mary Gwin. Upcoming projects include a mono-opera based on the 2nd century poem Ornithogonia – a predecessor to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, about transformations of humans into birds – with the soprano and double bass duo Confluss, and an auxiliary percussion suite for Michael Barranco. In Summer 2019, Aaron was selected to take part in the Underwood New Music Readings with the American Composers Orchestra under conductor Ludovic Morlot, and subsequently was awarded their Audience Choice Commission. Aaron has attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Fresh Inc. Festival, and the Source Song Festival where he has studied with Derek Bermel, Dan Visconti, and Libby Larsen. In Summer 2020, he will attend the Aspen Music Festival composition program with Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis. This past spring, Aaron was awarded the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
 
Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, Aaron earned his BA in music from Grinnell College in Iowa, where he studied composition with Eric McIntyre and John Rommereim. He completed his MM in composition at the Yale School of Music, where his teachers included Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, David Lang, Hannah Lash, and Christopher Theofanidis.