biography
Ash Graham (they/them) is a nonbinary composer and an enthusiastic educator. Their creative work explores sinister dream states, the macabre, queer perspectives on science fiction, and the connections between electronic dance music and experimental music through the lens of speculative narratives, drawing inspiration from artists ranging from György Ligeti to Flying Lotus to Boy Harsher. Ash holds a PhD in Music Composition from UC San Diego.
Ash has worked with highly-regarded artists such as King Britt, Stalina Villarreal, Lee Vinson, Amy Williams, Robert Black, Deviant Septet, Oliver Xu, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and the Houston Symphony. Ash’s recent projects include collaborations with the newly formed cimbalom and violin duo Lamnth, a new work for Lee Vinson as part of Intersection’s LISTEN project, and a piece for percussionist Oliver Xu.
In 2021, Ash was a composition fellow at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Edward T. Cone Composition Institute, where they worked with Steven Mackey and Ludovic Morlot. Ash received Rice University’s Paul and Christiane Cooper Prize in Music Composition for their orchestra piece, Increase in 2019. In 2018, Ash was commissioned to write a piece for soprano Julie Moore and members of the Houston Symphony in collaboration with Interfaith Ministries Case Worker Salemu Alimasi and poet Stalina Villarreal as part of the Houston Symphony’s Resilient Sounds Project. In 2015, Ash won an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award for their chamber work, Five Poems of Edward Lear. They were also the recipient of Eastman School of Music’s Louis Lane Prize and a finalist in the BMI Student Composer Awards. Ash’s composition teachers include Lei Liang, Pierre Jalbert, Karim Al-Zand, David Liptak, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Robert Morris, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Patrick Long.
As an Associate Instructor at UC San Diego, Ash has taught classes ranging from small, interactive composition seminars to large lectures in accessible electronic music composition for all experience levels. They also worked as a beatmaking instructor at the San Diego Media Arts Center in Summer 2022 and served as an assistant for Professor King Britt’s highly renowned seminar, Blacktronika - Afrofuturism in Electronic Music from 2020 - 2022. Ash was a recipient of the Teaching Assistant Excellence Award at UC San Diego in 2021. As a Brown Fellow, Ash taught advanced music theory and aural skills classes to high school students as part of the Shepherd School of Music’s Michael P. Hammond Preparatory Program. Ash has also taught percussion lessons as part of Susquehanna University’s Preparatory Program. Ash holds a Master of Music in Composition from Rice University and a Bachelor of Music with distinction in both Composition and Percussion as well as a Performer’s Certificate from Eastman School of Music.
An enthusiastic performer, Ash was awarded the Milton Schlesinger Percussion Prize in 2016. They appeared as a soloist with the Eastman Percussion Ensemble in May 2017. Ash has performed with red fish blue fish at UC San Diego, and also has worked with conductor Brad Lubman in the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, where they performed works by Boulez, Birtwistle, and Hurel. Additionally, they have performed in many student-run new music ensembles, including Hear&Now at Rice University as well as Ensemble id and Sound ExChange at Eastman. Ash's percussion teachers include Michael Burritt, James Ross, Lee Vinson, and Charles Ross.
CV available by request.