Composers

John Aylward

John Aylward Composer and pianist John Aylward is a founder of the East Coast Composers Ensemble. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Brandeis University. Aylward’s compositions are inspired by the subtle and sophisticated rhythms of the natural world. Aylward’s work has been performed across the United States by ensembles such as The New York New Music Ensemble, The Lydian String Quartet, Duo Maintenant and The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.

As a pianist, Aylward maintains an active performance schedule contributing to ECCE concert repertoire. He recently premiered some of his own works for piano while in residence at the Sergipe Conservatory in Aracaju, Brazil, and will be performing a concert of electro-acoustic works in Sao Paulo, Brazil, later this year. Aylward’s compositions and concert engagements have also taken him to Holland, Austria, Germany and the KKL in Switzerland.

Aylward received his BM in piano performance from the University of Arizona where he studied with Ives and Grandos interpretter Nicholas Zumbro. Aylward also holds a MFA in Music Theory and Composition from Brandeis University. His teachers have included Martin Boykan, David Rakowski, Eric Chafe, George Tsontakis, Mario Davidovsky, Craig Walsh, Pamela Decker and Marilyn Nonken.

Nathan Shields

Nathan Shields Nathan Shields is a founding member of ECCE.  His compositions have been performed in such locations as the Wellesley Composers' Conference, Boston's Jordan Hall, Julliard's Paul Hall, and the Cathedral of Saint-Severin in Paris. He recently received his second BMI award, as well as the Toru Takemitsu prize from the Japan Society of Boston.

Shields is a graduate student at Juilliard, where he studies with Milton Babbitt, and is a recipient of the Steuermann Memorial Prize and the Marvin Hamlisch Scholarship.  He earned his B.M. from the New England Conservatory, studying composition with Lee Hyla and David Rakowski, and has participated in such festivals as the Wellesley Composers Conference, the European American Musical Alliance, the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music.  

Shields was initially trained as a cellist and chamber musician. Although he has written for a wide variety of ensembles, his most characteristic works are densely woven, highly dramatic chamber works, with a debt to both the purity of Renaissance sacred music and the anguish of early Modernism.  His music is elusive and dark, and can be at once brutal and delicate. In sensibility and form it is distinctly modern, yet it springs from an esthetic principle that is deeply indebted to Wagnerian Romanticism -- the belief that art can reveal a transcendent reality, and that music can express truths, sublime or horrible, that lie beyond the reach of language and reason.

Wes Matthews

Wes Matthews Wes Matthews was born in South Bend, Indiana and raised in Decatur, Illinois. He studied jazz trumpet as well as classical piano at DePaul University in Chicago. He then transferred to the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with composer and trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and earned his B.M. degree in jazz composition.  

Wes has attended residencies at the Wellesley Composers Conference and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and participated in masterclasses with composers Chinary Ung, Scott Wheeler, and Henry Threadgill. As an improviser, Wes performed at the 2004 and 2005 Zeitgeist Piano Festivals, and has performed in the Modern Improvised Music series at the Artists-at-Large Gallery in Hyde Park, MA.  

Current projects include the launching of the Open Society Concert Music Series, a contemporary music series at the Middle East in Cambridge, in addition to the release of an album of duo improvisations with percussionist Bob Moses and the completion of a collection of contemporary American poem settings for chamber ensemble and voice. He is currently attending the New England Conservatory as a graduate composition student of Lee Hyla and pianist/composer Anthony Coleman.

Peter Bayne

Peter Bayne is working on his M.F.A. at Brandeis University where he studies with Martin Boykan and in the BEAMS electro acoustic studio with Eric Chasalow. He is a composer of numerous chamber, choral, solo instrumental, and electronic works in addition to an ever growing library of art songs, and self produced pop songs. Recently, he has created sound installations for visual artists working in painting and sculture. He also regularly performs piano, electronics, and voice in free improv and noise music concerts in New York and Boston. He is a member of the East Coast Composers Ensemble, and is excited about the future of ECCE as a vibrant force for new music.

Performed Composers