Aaron Cassidy

Aaron Cassidy is an American composer and conductor. After 15 years living and working in England, in 2022 he relocated to Germany, which had increasingly become the base for much of his conducting activity. He lives in Berlin and works as Professor of Composition at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, where he also serves as Director of Incontri – Institut für neue Musik.

As a composer, he is best known for his influential work with multicolored, graphical, tablature notations that prioritise the physical, bodily, and mechanical aspects of sound-production in music, alongside his more recent work exploring the notation of ‘non-geometrical’ rhythm, which untethers speed, duration, and meter from traditional concepts of pulse. Recordings of his work are available on 12 commercial CD releases from NEOS, Kairos, NMC, HCR, and New Focus Records, and his compositions have been presented in hundreds of performances across 29 countries at festivals including Donaueschingen, Ultraschall, Warsaw Autumn, Huddersfield, Darmstadt, Gaudeamus, Dark Music Days, Music Biennale Zagreb, Bludenz, Mixtur, and Tage für Neue Musik Zürich, and at important venues for new music including Southbank Centre London, Miller Theatre, National Concert Hall Taipei, and the Melbourne Recital Centre. 

Aaron’s work as a conductor is stylistically diverse, encompassing both contemporary and historical repertoire across orchestral, operatic, chamber, and choral settings. He has performed in the Großer Saal of the Berlin Philharmonie for Musikfest Berlin, at the Munich Biennale, MaerzMusik at the Festspielhaus Berlin, the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall of the Melbourne Recital Centre, Gare du Nord Basel, Dampfzentrale Bern, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Klangbrücken Festival, and June in Buffalo. He has appeared as a conductor with Ensemble Musikfabrik, ensemble mosaik, ELISION, Ensemble Proton Bern, Schola Heidelberg, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Interface, the Australian National Academy of Music, Ensemble Incontri, and the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, leading many dozens of world premieres in the process. He has recorded as a conductor for Kairos, HCR, and Wergo.

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