Biography
Aaron Holloway-Nahum (b. 1983) is one of his generation’s leading composers, conductors, and recording engineers. His music is known for its intimate portraiture of its performers - often using audio interviews with them as the starting place for his electronics and musical material. The pieces are characterised by expressive and experimental narrative structures that draw on cinematic storytelling, and Aaron’s expertise in live multi-media (especially spatialised electronics and video).
Upcoming premieres the GBSR Duo at Darmstadt ‘25 (with spatialised electronics and video), a new solo work for Clarinet and Modular Synthesis (Robert Ek), and a saxophone quartet across three continents. Recent commissions include the ECLAT festival (Marco Blauww and Ty Bouque with analogue electronics), soloist Ivo Nilsson and Gageego!, soloist Emily Levin and Northwestern University’s Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Distat Terra Festival.
Selected as one of just two composers for the Peter Eötvös Foundation inaugural mentorship class, Aaron has held a variety of fellowships over the past decade, including Tanglewood, Aspen, Cheltenham, a Copland House Residency, and many more. Notable past performances of his music include the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra (Hungary), Plural Ensemble (Madrid), and a full-length film score recorded at Abbey Road.
The long hours at Abbey Road sparked a fervent interest—and secondary career—in audio recording and production for Aaron. As the managing director and engineer for Coviello Music Productions, Aaron produces roughly a dozen albums per year of Europe and the United States’ premier ensembles; his clientele includes the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Arditti Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, and Adam Swayne, whose solo album of American Piano music “Speak to Me” was nominated in two categories for the prestigious Opus Klassik Awards in Germany.
Recently, a growing interest in spatial audio – combined with strong business acumen (Aaron obtained an MBA from Imperial College London during the pandemic) led Aaron into a new role as the Head of Soundscape at Southby Productions. Southby is a global leader in d&b Soundscape, and in this role, Aaron leads a pre-production & demonstration room in Hackney where he works alongside composers, sound engineers, sound designers, visual artists, and an array of other creatives to help them get the most out of this new and emerging technology.
Narrowing the gap of gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequality within new music is of paramount importance to Holloway-Nahum; his most effective work in this regard has been through his work in leading Riot Ensemble, an organization that has received numerous accolades since its founding in 2012: I Care If You Listen deemed Riot “an ensemble with vision and artistry”, while The New Yorker’s Alex Ross celebrated its most recent album as “one of 2019’s best recordings.” As Riot Ensemble’s chief curator and conductor, Aaron has showcased contemporary work from a variety of composers, including Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Ann Cleare, Kit Downes, Daniel Kidane, Liza Lim, Alexander Hawkins, Clara Iannotta, Lisa Streich and a new work by Georg Friedrich Haas performed in total darkness, for which Aaron learned to (re)tune a piano.
Education, Teaching & Writing
In addition to all this practical work, Aaron is an avid and dedicated teacher. Four eight years he travelled monthly to work as a Guest Lecturer at the Darmstadt School of Applied Sciences (Germany). Recently, he has taken a position on the composition faculty of the Royal Academy of Music, where he has raised money from the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne to expand and deepen an ongoing residency with Riot to offer multi-year training to the next generation of new music artists.
Aaron was the first composer to receive a Doctorate in Composition from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and holds additional music degrees from the Royal Academy of Music (M.M., LRAM and ARAM in Composition), and Northwestern University (B.M. in Composition, Ad Hoc B.M. in Conducting). He extends his warmest gratitude to his primary composition teachers: Julian Anderson, Philip Cashian, Augusta Read Thomas and Amy Williams.
Aaron also hold an MBA – awarded with Distinction from Imperial College London in 2021. His writing on contemporary music features regularly on I Care If You Listen, New Music Box, in industry magazines such as Arts Manager International, and in professional journals such as Tempo.