About

Aiyana Braun (b. 1997) is a composer deeply fascinated by the juxtaposition and reconciliation of groove-oriented and ametric material. Passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration, she often embraces the role of community and performer agency in shaping and creating musical outcomes. She has received awards and residencies from the BMI Foundation, ASCAP Foundation, American Composers Forum, Copland House, NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, and has been featured on NPR’s From the Top, PBS’s On Stage at Curtis, and I Care if You Listen.TV. Her primary mentors are Pulitzer and Grammy winning composer Jennifer Higdon, Pulitzer Prize finalist and Grammy winning composer Ted Hearne, and David Ludwig, the Dean of Music at The Juilliard School.

Aiyana debuted at the Kimmel Center’s Marian Anderson Hall (previously Verizon Hall), where she performed an original composition for the Marian Anderson Awards, honoring famed producer and director Norman Lear and poet Maya Angelou. Shortly after, she was commissioned at age 15 to write a piece for the New York Philharmonic. Since then, she has worked with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (in a workshop led by John Adams), Berkeley Symphony (in a two-year residency mentored by Anna Clyne, made possible through the “Music Alive” residency from the League of American Orchestras and New Music USA), Orkest de Ereprijs (Netherlands), San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, New York Youth Symphony, as well as musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Orchestra (Italy), Buffalo Philharmonic, New York City Ballet Orchestra, and the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, among others.

She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University where she teaches a graduate seminar in Psychoacoustics, as well as Undergraduate level Theory, Keyboard Harmony, and Musicianship. She was previously a Lecturer at California State University, Fullerton where she designed and taught courses Composition, Orchestration, Music Theory, and Musicianship, in addition to teaching private lessons in Composition to Masters students at CSUF. Aiyana has taught at the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers Program alongside Angélica Negrón and Pulitzer finalist Mary Kouyoumdjian, the Curtis Institute of Music's “Summerfest,” and was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Southern California. She is fortunate to be an alumnus of The Juilliard School, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the University of Southern California.

She has had lessons or masterclasses with Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, Un Suk Chin, Chen Yi, Libby Larsen, Caroline Shaw, Derek Bermel, Christopher Theofanidis, Anna Clyne, Stephen Stucky, Ian Krouse, and Augusta Read Thomas, among others.