JAMES AIKMAN
In addition to early piano lessons and a great public school music program, James Aikman credits his early experience in electronic music for helping him develop a strong sense for instrumental color that was a natural outgrowth of the rich palette of sounds discovered in the studio. Ironically, his first significant success was found in purely acoustic music.
Aikman’s first Sonata for Violin and Piano was composed for the first prize
laureate of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Mihaela Martin, who stayed with Aikman’s family during the 1982 competition. It was during this time that Aikman met the legendary violinist Josef Gingold, who co-founded the competition with Thomas Beczkiewizc. Aikman’s sonata later won the 1987
Carmichael Competition and was performed, recorded and broadcast on regional public television and radio by violinist, Joshua Bell, and by pianist, Charles Webb, then Dean of The School of Music at Indiana University. Immediately thereafter, Aikman’s electro-acoustic music collaboration with Armando Tranquilino, Tragoidia/Komoidia (1987), garnered first prize in the 1988 Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Bourges and was recorded on CD with support of the French Ministry of Culture. Aikman’s first orchestral piece, A Bottle of Notes and Some Voyages (1988), took the Dean’s Prize at Indiana University, was supported by an American Music Center Grant (1989), was selected by John Corigliano and Michael Morgan for a reading in Orchestra Hall, Chicago and was selected for performance in Miami Beach by the New World Symphony during the American Symphony Orchestra League’s American Repertoire Concert Series (1991). It was a rich time in Bloomington, with a strong group of graduate student composer colleagues including J. Mark Scearce, David Dzubay, Keith Fitch, Bruce Hamilton, David Heuser, and notable others. During 1990 –1991, James Aikman was a Master Artist Fellow
with support from the Indiana Arts Commission.
During this time, Aikman wrote works that would later win national acclaim: Spring is purple jewelry (1990) won the 1995 G. Schirmer Young American Art Song Competition and was performed by multiple Grammy-Award winning vocalist Dawn Upshaw in her Carnegie Hall debut with pianist Gilbert Kalish in 1997; Glossolalia (1991) was awarded the International Society for Contemporary Music’s National Award, New York, 2000. After graduating from The School of Music at Indiana University with a Doctorate in Music (1993), James Aikman became a Fulbright Fellow in Music Composition (1993-1994) and traveled to Amsterdam, Holland where he was a private student of one of the world’s foremost composers, Louis Andriessen, through the auspices of the Netherlands Royal Conservatory.
Upon returning to the United States, James Aikman became a Fellow in Music
Composition with the Michigan Society of Fellows (1996-1999, Ann Arbor). During this time, Aikman completed music for his first solo CD, White Sunday Light, which was a compilation of works written during his fellowship and recorded by members of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Aikman was concurrently named Composer-In- Residence with Cathedral Arts of Indianapolis (1996 – 2000).
During this time, however, tragedy struck. Aikman’s wife, pianist Deanna Aikman, was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease in August of 1997. Thus, with three young children (ages 7, 4, and 6 months at that time), James Aikman faced the challenge of a lifetime. Since then, he has simultaneously raised wonderful children, continued to write music, lectured on various musical topics at The University of Michigan and Butler University, composed, conducted and produced music, all the while caring for, and overseeing the care for, his terminally ill former wife.
Aikman has persevered . His work is recognized in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, and continues to receive annual awards for its “unique prestige value” (1990 – 2009) from ASCAP (The American Society for Composers, Authors and Publishers). A rebirth of his career is now taking place: a recording of his works for violin, piano and electronics was released in 2005 on the Centaur label that has received internet and radio play in the U.S. and abroad; he has written a song cycle, Some Things I Love (2007), for Voices, Chorus and String Orchestra based on poems by former President and Nobel Peace Laureate, Jimmy Carter, with President Carter’s permission and support, that premiered in May of 2009 with The Lamont Symphony Orchestra
and Chorus, Lawrence Golan, Music Director and Conductor; Aikman’s new Violin Concerto: Lines in Motion was recently premiered and recorded by Charles Wetherbee, Violin and the St. Petersberg Symphony, Vladimir Lande, Conducting, in June of 2009 (it will receive its U. S. premiere in Washington, D.C. during the National Gallery of Art’s Meyerhoff Collection exhibit during the American Music Festival in November 2009); the conductor, John Nelson, has
initiated a new work for voices and chamber orchestra based on striking poems from Stained Glass (Archive Poetry: 2001 – 2009) by Elise Aikman (b. 1990), the composer’s daughter, now a Regents’ Merit Scholar at the University of Michigan; furthermore, James Aikman was recently asked to write a new work for Native American Flute, chamber orchestra and electronic media by the distinguished flutist, James Pellerite.
Aikman’s drive to seriously study music and the art of its composition has brought him to many cities where he has studied privately, or has worked in master class settings, with an astounding variety of notable musicians and composers of contemporary music: Michael Schelle, Earle Brown, Frederick Fox , Donald Erb, Claude Baker, John Eaton, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Earl Kim, Milton Babbitt, Harvey Sollberger, Josef Gingold, Bernard Rands, Jacob Druckman, Louis Andriessen, Leslie Bassett, and William Bolcom.
As the conductor and oboist, Vladimir Lande, has stated: “James Aikman can trace his compositional lineage, via his teachers and grand teachers, through Beethoven, to J. S. Bach. He is proud of that honor. His music, while genuinely influenced by the present, reflects this grand tradition of music making, and recalls the best in our musical heritage. The relationship between composer, musicians and audiences is renewed in his music. This combination of attributes and his creative imagination allows him to write true music of the future.”