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About
Pianist AARON LIKNESS has been hailed for "superb clarity" and "effortless elegance" in performances of classical, avant-garde, and contemporary music across the United States and Europe. Active as a soloist and collaborator in the New York and Boston metropolitan areas, he has appeared in recent seasons with ALEA III, American Modern Ensemble, Beth Morrison Projects, Boston Musica Viva, Firebird Ensemble, Hub New Music, Transient Canvas, violinists Rolf Schulte and Diamanda Dramm, dancer/choreographer Silas Riener, international opera star Anna Caterina Antonacci, and Metropolitan Opera soprano Amy Shoremount-Obra. Forthcoming recordings will soon be available on Splendor Records, TRPTK, and CP2.
An enthusiastic advocate of new music, Likness has worked with renowned composers Hans Abrahamsen, Hanspeter Kyburz, Tristan Murail, Tobias Picker, Roger Reynolds, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Christian Wolff, and has performed US and world premieres of works by Beat Furrer, Zaid Jabri, Mikael Karlsson, Jonathan Howard Katz, Shirish Korde, Katarina Miljkovic, Stratis Minakakis, Wolfgang Rihm, and several composers of the new generation. His adventurous performances and collaborations have included Rzewski’s Coming Together with poet Saul Williams, Cage’s raucous masterpiece Concert for Piano and Orchestra with conductor Stephen Drury, video and multimedia works, music for amplified toy pianos, and performances of traditional Javanese music with Gamelan Nyai Saraswati and Boston Village Gamelan. Likness is a member of Boston’s acclaimed new-music sinfonietta, Sound Icon.
A native of Durham, NC, Likness attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning the school’s most prestigious awards in performance and composition. He went on to pursue graduate studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was named recipient of the John Cage Award for outstanding performances of contemporary music. His principal teachers have been Thomas Otten, Stephen Drury, and Ursula Oppens.