Aaron Grad (b. 1980) is a young American composer and guitarist whose music embraces both his roots in popular culture and his training in the Western tradition. Born in Alexandria, Virginia, he was a listless student of piano and violin from age five. At ten he started fresh on guitar, and was soon writing songs, forming bands, and playing his first jazz gigs. Grad moved to New York in 1998 to study jazz guitar at New York University, but the “downtown” new music scene quickly seduced him. While completing his Bachelor of Music degree in three years, he performed with his own groups at The Knitting Factory and Cornelia St. Café and founded a concert series at Judson Memorial Church. Since 2001, Grad has composed approximately 30 works for concert instruments as well as many songs for himself and for bands to perform. His Concertino for Clarinet earned him an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award in 2006, as well as grants from the American Music Center and Meet the Composer. The 2007 work Mandala of the Two Realms, for large orchestra with onstage martial artists executing Tai Chi forms, received honorable mention from the Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute. Bassist Michael Formanek and the Peabody Jazz Orchestra premiered the 2007 work Confused Blues, which received an ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award in 2009. Recently, Albany Records released a disc that includes Grad’s 2003 work Lepidopterology. Grad received his M.M. in Composition in 2008 from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Christopher Theofanidis. Grad’s new ensemble, Petrichor, debuted in February 2009, performing a set of new songs that blur boundaries between rock and chamber music. Besides composing, Grad writes program notes for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra and others, and reviews concerts for the Washington Post. He recently moved to Seattle, Washington, where he lives with his partner, Jen, and their cats Fea and Codetta. Last updated October 2009.