Aaron Houston
“As a relatively young and emerging composer myself, it was not too long ago that I was a high school band student who get to perform new music and actually meet the living composer who wrote it. That was such a great experience for me! I want to be a part of sharing a similar experience for the next group of musicians and hopefully inspiring them and exposing them to new music and living composers.”
Biography
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 as a “strong voice in composition” and reviews have said “[feels] alive and tangible to the audience” (Emily McCarthy, Tallahassee Democrat).
His recent work, Midway to Midtown (2019), merges the influences of Texas Blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan with “brilliant orchestration” (George Tsontakis) and was premiered by David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony. Other projects include Americana Soul (2019), a virtuosic work for unaccompanied viola premiered by violist Brian Bires as an encore with Gewandhaus Akademisches Orchester in Leipzig, Germany, Delirium Nocturnum (2019) for Fifth House Ensemble which responds to the destruction from Hurricane Michael, and a new work for orchestra inspired by the story of Prometheus.
Aaron’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles including Albany Symphony Orchestra, 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, 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.
Aaron earned his DM in Composition from Florida State University where he studied with Stephen Montague, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Clifton Callender and the late Ladislav Kubik as the recipient of the 2017-2018 Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Fellowship for orchestral composition.