Part V of Louis Andriessen's La Commedia. Soloists: Lindsey Kesselman, Cristina Zavalloni, and Andrew Sauvageau. Children's Chorus of Washington, Third Practice, Great Noise Ensemble, Armando Bayolo, conducting.

GNE 2014 April 6

La Commedia: Lucce Aeterna

My third symphony, Symphony: Savage Howls, performed by the Bowling Green State University Wind Symphony. Written in memory of Stephen Dennis Bodner (1975-2011), and raging against the death of a brilliant man taken from us too soon.

1. Shriekfanfare

2008 May 18

III. Lieto Fine

Chamber Symphony: Obsessioneering, my fourth symphony, is based on my organ sonata, Obsessioneering. A word of my own devising, "obsessioneering" refers to the wilful cultivation of obsessions, something I don't imagine to be particularly healthy.

Performed here by Great Noise Ensemble, David Vickerman, conductor, in Washington, DC, in September, 2014.

GNE 2015 September 19

Chamber Symphony: Obsessioneering III

Chamber Symphony: Obsessioneering II

Chamber Symphony: Obsessioneering I

A work of meditative, slow, mostly quiet music suitable for a reverberant space. I have for some time been interested in creating music that can inhabit a space much like, say, the paintings of Mark Rothko do. Also, in the increasingly fast world in which we live, finding a moment to just be is difficult. In my own way, this is an attempt at creating an atmosphere conducive to such reflection.

GNE 2019 02 16

Hymns to the Incomprehensibility of the Divine

Hymnody to the Vastness of Eternity (J. Reilly Lewis in memoriam)

Hymnodies to the Vicissitudes of Life

Born in 1973 in Santurce, Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, composer Armando Bayolo began musical studies at the age of twelve.  At sixteen he went on to study at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, where he first began the serious study of composition.  He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M. 1995), where his teachers were Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner and Christopher Rouse; Yale University (M.M. 1997), where he studied with Roberto Sierra, Jacob Druckman, Ingram Marshall and Martin Bresnick; and the University of Michigan (D.M.A. 2001) where he studied with Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng and Evan Chambers.
Mr. Bayolo has been hailed for his "suggestive aural imagination" (El Nuevo Día) in works that are "full of lush ideas and a kind of fierce grandeur, (unfolding) with subtle, driving power" (The Washington Post).  His "music combines the audacity of popular music, the verve-filled rhythmic language of Latin America, and the pugnacity of postmodern classicism into a heady, formidable concoction" (Sequenza21),  and "deserves to be heard many more times, and in many more places.  It is new, it is fresh, and it gets its message across" (The Charlotte Observer) "with quite a high degree of poetic expressiveness" (Music-Web International).  
	Mr. Bayolo's music has been commissioned and performed throughout the world by some of today's most important musicians and ensembles.  He is the recipient of important commissions and awards from the Aspen Music Festival, Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Music Department of the National Gallery of Art, the Arts Councils of the states of Iowa and North Carolina, the Cintas Foundation, the Minnesota Orchestra and American Composers Forum, the Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence, the all-Virginia Intercollegiate Band, the Festival Interamericano de las Artes (Puerto Rico), and the MacDowell Colony.
	Mr. Bayolo is an "adventurous, imaginative and fiercely committed (The Washington Post) advocate for contemporary music in American culture through his activities as Artistic Director and conductor of Great Noise Ensemble (since 2005), curator of the New Music at the Atlas series for the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington (from 2011-14), and as a writer for such publications as Sequenza21 and NewMusicBox.  His cello concerto, Orfei Mors and the cantata, Kaddish:Passio:Rothko, were each nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in music. Recordings of his music can be heard on the Sono Luminus, Inova, New Focus and Great Noise labels. His music is published by his own imprint, Olibel Music , as well as Murphy Music Press, and available through his web site, www.armandobayolo.com.

Armando Bayolo

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