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Aaron Houston (b. 1991) composes music that lives where the energetic soul of rock, folk music, and more collides with his classical training in unexpected ways to create what Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has labeled a “strong voice in composition” and reviews have said “[feels] alive and tangible to the audience” (Emily McCarthy, Tallahassee Democrat). His recent work, Rude Moods (2023), merges many of these influences in a suite of miniatures for unaccompanied bassoon commissioned by a consortium of 12 bassoonists led by Ryan Reynolds of the Akropolis Quartet. Other projects include All in Good Time (2023), an exciting work for wind ensemble commissioned by Jeffrey D. Jones and the Marcus High Wind Symphony for their 2023 Midwest Clinic performance, Dog Days (2022) for the Atlantic Brass Quintet, and A Shot in the Dark (2024) commissioned and premiered by Pat Dunnigan for the FSU Summer Music Camps. Aaron's music has been commissioned and performed by David Alan Miller and members of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, Dallas Winds, Fifth House Ensemble, the University Symphony Orchestra at Florida State University, Baltimore Choral Arts Society, the Baylor Symphony Orchestra and more with performances in Germany, Brazil, and across the United States. Nominated for an award from the Academy of Arts & Letters, Aaron has also been a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, winner of the Dallas Winds Fanfare Contest, finalist for the Verdant Vibes 2019 CAll for Scores, winner of the Civitasolis Quintet 2020 Call for Scores, finalist for the 2016 Baylor University Wind Ensemble Composition Contest, and winner of the 2015 Baylor University Orchestra Composition Contest. His work Jam and Toast (2019) for solo horn was listed as an Honorable Mention for the "Virtuoso Division" of the International Horn Society Composition contest and featured at teh 2022 IHS Symposium. Aaron holds degrees in composition from Baylor University and Florida State University where he was the 2017-2018 Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Fellow for orchestral composition and composer-in-residence. His teachers and mentors have included Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Stephen Montague, Clifton Callender, Scott McAllister, and the late Ladislav Kubik. |