I was born in Edmon­ton, Canada, in 1980. I received my Bach­e­lor of Music with Hon­ours from the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto (2005), and my Master’s degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego (2007). I have also pur­sued stud­ies at the Konin­klijk Con­ser­va­to­rium in the Hague, Nether­lands. My teach­ers have included Chan Ka Nin, Chi­nary Ung, Philippe Manoury, and Mar­tijn Padding, among oth­ers. In addi­tion, I have par­tic­i­pated in mas­ter­classes with com­posers such as Gilles Trem­blay, Mario Davi­dovsky, Denys Bou­liane, François Paris, and Hel­mut Lachen­mann. Prior to study­ing com­po­si­tion, I stud­ied jazz drum­ming and Cuban folk­loric per­cus­sion, which took to me to Havana for a sum­mer of pri­vate study in 2002.

I have had per­for­mances and com­mis­sions from ensem­bles in sev­eral coun­tries, includ­ing the Nieuw Ensem­ble, the Ensem­ble con­tem­po­rain de Mon­treal, the Nou­vel ensem­ble mod­erne, the Uni­ver­sity of Alberta’s Acad­emy String Orches­tra, Tapes­try New Opera Works, Toca Loca, Con­tin­uum, the Knights Orches­tra, and the Arditti Quar­tet. My music has been per­formed in Canada, the USA, Cuba, the UK, Ger­many, and the Nether­lands. Radio broad­casts include CBC Radio 2, Radio-Canada’s Espace musique, and Toronto’s CIUT.

My music has been pre­sented in fes­ti­vals such as Amsterdam’s Gaudea­mus Music Week (my piece Cul­ture no.1 was selected for their 2006 com­pe­ti­tion), Toronto’s New Wave, soundaXis, and SHIFT fes­ti­vals; Aberdeen’s Sound Fes­ti­val; and New York’s MATA Fes­ti­val. I was addi­tion­ally selected as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Canada in the 2008 World Music Days in Lithua­nia. One of my solo pieces, Flüsse-Einflüsse, was cho­sen as a required exam piece for the grad­u­at­ing accor­dion stu­dents at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik – Trossin­gen in 2006. I have also received var­i­ous awards and grants, includ­ing four prizes in Canada’s SOCAN Awards for Young Com­posers (2004, 2004, 2006, 2008), a SOCAN res­i­dency grant, two grad­u­at­ing schol­ar­ships from U of T, as well as com­mis­sion­ing, travel, project, and study grants from the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts and the Alberta Foun­da­tion for the Arts.

Over time, my music has grad­u­ally taken on more and more aspects of my par­tic­u­lar musi­cal back­ground. I grew up play­ing jazz and rock drums in addi­tion to clas­si­cal per­cus­sion, and this influ­ence has become increas­ingly clear in my pieces, although not always in terms of direct appro­pri­a­tion. What is more com­mon is an inter­est in the cul­tural ele­ments of hear­ing: why we hear things in cer­tain ways, what it is we lis­ten for in par­tic­u­lar gen­res, and so forth.

In addi­tion, my recent pieces have taken a par­tic­u­larly crit­i­cal slant on these ques­tions. I tend not to trust state­ments or ideas that peo­ple take as axiomatic, so I have focused on writng music that decon­structs these “givens” in order to find out exactly how axiomatic they really are—chal­lenge for the sake of chal­lenge, in other words. Almost always I do find some grain of truth in the axioms, though this process of intense scrutiny serves as a sort of inspira­tion to explore some­thing new, to push my music in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and also to bet­ter inter­nal­ize the musi­cal or per­cep­tual or cul­tural truths that I do hap­pen to stum­ble across. And what’s more, I often find myself say­ing, “Well, I was right, there really is a lot about that idea that is totally superfluous.”

So there are these two facets: one the one hand, my inter­est in cul­tural ele­ments of music, stem­ming from my back­ground in jazz, rock, clas­si­cal music, Cuban pop­u­lar and folk­loric musics, et cetera; and on the other, a kind of rebel­lious side that likes to ques­tion musi­cal author­i­ties for the fun of it.

On top of that, I also have some other more tran­sient inter­ests—flavours of the week that keep things fresh. For exam­ple, over the past few pieces, I have been inter­ested in writ­ing music that is fast-paced, rhyth­mic, and light in tex­ture. I’ve def­i­nitely writ­ten a lot of slow dark music, but it seems to me that there is a pre­pon­der­ance of that kind of thing in the new music com­mu­nity and I want to see how far I can push the other direc­tion. Com­posers like Jacob ter Veld­huis and Richard Ayres have been par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tions in that regard, though I am just as likely if not more to look at pop­u­lar music for this. I don’t think my music resem­bles those two com­posers very much, but they are peo­ple whose music I have thought about a lot as I write my own. And again, I also often sit and think about the Beastie Boys or the Black Eyed Peas; Aphex Twin, Björk, Stere­o­lab, or Met­ric; or what­ever. There’s some­thing to learn from any kind of music; the impor­tant thing is to actu­ally sit down with it and do the thinking.

Another thing that’s come up a lot lately is a rever­sal of for­mal pri­or­i­ties. Actu­ally, this might be start­ing to fall under the cat­e­gory of axioms I’ve chal­lenged repeat­edly instead of just a flavour of the week, but still… Many pieces by com­posers in the new music tra­di­tion have long, flow­ing forms with strong hier­ar­chi­cal inter­re­la­tions between sec­tions and seam­less tran­si­tions, often built upon a sin­gle motive or series of terse musi­cal ideas. That comes from the Beethoven tra­di­tion I sup­pose, which is as good a model as any to emu­late. But I wanted to know if there was another way to do it. So a lot of my recent music deals with very sim­ple long-term for­mal struc­tures, based on a series of unre­lated musi­cal motives that change from sec­tion to sec­tion with very lit­tle tran­si­tional mate­r­ial. Coher­ence is cre­ated through the larger sim­ple for­mal pat­terns instead of the long-term devel­op­ment of motives.

For exam­ple, Cul­ture no.1 is in four dis­creet sec­tions plus a coda. Each sec­tion is started by an audio sam­ple that the musi­cians then imi­tate, and that’s all there is to the form. No interre­la­tion between the sec­tions, no mate­r­ial that comes back later to be devel­oped. But on the local level, I have very tight inter­ac­tions between mate­r­ial, clear devel­op­ment of motives, and this helps to carry the music through from one sec­tion to the next. The global char­ac­ter of the sec­tions, how­ever, and not the local devel­op­ment, is what strings together the piece as a whole.

As the say­ing goes, talk­ing about music is like danc­ing about archi­tec­ture, and prob­a­bly this lit­tle blurb will seem com­pletely inad­e­quate tomor­row. But that’s always the way it is and I hope at least this serves as a snap­shot of what’s going on in my music right now, which is always use­ful. Actu­ally, I don’t like that quo­ta­tion; talk­ing about music is noth­ing like danc­ing about archi­tec­ture. Metaphors like that over-simplify the issue and lead to the kinds of musi­cal axioms I don’t like. Maybe it’s bet­ter not to say any­thing. So I’ll just leave it here and you can decide for your­self what my motives are, if you’re so inclined.

Aaron Ger­vais…

…has had his music inter­preted in 172 coun­tries, in all 7 con­ti­nents, and in var­i­ous other loca­tions, in addi­tion to per­for­mances by all of the lead­ing ensem­bles world­wide and most pro­fes­sional soc­cer clubs.

…is a com­poser. He writes music, and in his spare time enjoys adding artic­u­la­tions to other people’s scores, long walks by the beach, and soli­tary computer-lit din­ners slav­ing over his work.

…is inter­ested in the appli­ca­tion of asym­met­ri­cal poly­va­lent pitch nests to the prob­lems of culturo-perceptual rela­tion­ships involv­ing nine-dimensional string the­ory data sets. This of course, implies the use of evo­lu­tion­ary qua­dratic sieves for the pur­poses of…

…received his musi­cal train­ing on the streets of south-central LA, push­ing drums and pimp­ing rows. When he’s not in the stu­dio or cap­ping cops in the street, he’s cruis­ing with the ladies in his cus­tom Mer­cedes SLR or chill­ing at the most exclusive clubs.

…is one of the most well-known com­posers in the East La Jolla New Music scene, hav­ing estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion as a musi­cal pio­neer at such cutting-edge venues as Yummi Maki Yummi Box and Whole Foods, where the man­ager of the estab­lish­ment had this to say, “Aaron is a good employee [of com­po­si­tional tech­niques]. He’s one of the most metic­u­lous… [com­posers] I’ve ever had, although he takes too long on his lunch breaks.”

…is a com­poser. And you’re not—bitch!

…was a con­tem­po­rary of Mozart liv­ing in Prus­sia. He worked for the royal court of Fred­er­ick William II, both as a com­poser of mainly key­board works and as a lock­smith. Although his works were often dis­missed dur­ing his life­time as super­fi­cial and unimag­i­na­tive, musi­col­o­gists have recently shown that many of his sketches formed the basis for Mozart’s works, and that the two com­posers main­tained a pro­lific cor­re­spon­dence through­out their life­times. They would exchange scores and sug­ges­tions for improve­ments on a monthly basis under the pseu­do­nyms Adri­anus Gerveid and Wil­helm­gang Merzart…

…is a com­poser whose assent to star­dom is a true tes­ta­ment to the power of the Amer­i­can Dream. Grow­ing up in a poor farm­ing com­mu­nity in south­ern Texas, he worked three full-time jobs in order to pay his way through col­lege. Ger­vais is a dec­o­rated war vet­eran who believes in spread­ing the val­ues of free­dom and democ­racy through­out the world. His music is the music of a true patriot, and his rous­ing themes pro­vide resolve and inspi­ra­tion for our troops abroad dur­ing his numer­ous mil­i­tary concert tours.

…loves all music and all cul­tures. He uses the uni­ver­sal power of melody to end hatred and uplift all the peo­ples of the world. 20% of the pro­ceeds from his lat­est album, Beau­ti­ful Souls, Let Your Kind­ness Shine, will be donated to help pro­vide music lessons to under­priv­iledged chil­dren. Order now and you will also receive a per­son­al­ized inspi­ra­tional message.

…is the only com­poser today whose FDA-approved music is guar­an­teed to help you lose weight and keep off those unwanted pounds for good. No unpleas­ant and dif­fi­cult exer­cises, no diet­ing, just 20 min­utes a day of con­cen­trated lis­ten­ing and you’ll be on your way to that flat sexy tummy you’ve always dreamed of.

…, over phat beatz, rip­pin’ lyrics like a .44, keep ’em crump on da dance floor, yeah! At all da showz, we knowz who be per­mu­tatin’ the tone rowz, des­e­cratin’ melodiez in da high pitchez N da lowz. Shout out 2 my dogz Big Ian­nis X, Killa Kurtag, Feldie M. Feld­man, Char­lie “Ivory” Ives, da whole crew at da Sec­ond Vien­nese Projects, So Gubaidu-licious, my pro­ducer, N 2 all my thugs keepin’ it real from Tokyo 2 Berlin. See y’all in the clubs N check out my new track, Pitch Class Pimpin’.

…believes in world peace, sav­ing the whales, and the power of pos­i­tive think­ing. He hopes to serve as a role model for future gen­er­a­tions of aspir­ing com­posers; to help them be the best they can be and to feel good about them­selves and their bodies.

…’s music has been described by one lead­ing critic in the fol­low­ing terms: “The per­for­mance, although spec­tac­u­larly well pre­pared, was a dis­play of embar­rass­ing com­po­si­tional mast…[ery]. I thought we had finally done away with the pompous self-indulgence of twentieth-century mod­ernism, but Gervais’s work shows that I was mis­taken [in my eval­u­a­tion of the genre]. A per­for­mance def­i­nitely [not] to be missed, high­light­ing the dis­func­tion­al­ity of the New Music scene today.”