About — Aaron Likness

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 on the stages of Bargemusic, (le) poisson rouge, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Het Concertgebouw, and many others with performers including ALEA III, American Modern Ensemble, Beth Morrison Projects, Boston Musica Viva, Hub New Music, Sound Icon, Transient Canvas, and violinist Rolf Schulte. Based in upstate New York, Likness serves on the music faculty of Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

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 John Harbison, Mikael Karlsson, Jonathan Howard Katz, Katarina Miljkovic, Stratis Minakakis, Wolfgang Rihm, and many 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; the premiere of Merce Cunningham’s reconstructed solo Changeling with dancer and choreographer Silas Riener; Charles Ives with violinist Diamanda Dramm and folk musician Sam Amidon; and performances of traditional Javanese music with Gamelan Nyai Saraswati and Boston Village Gamelan. Recordings are available from CP2 Recordings and M Recordings Eindhoven.

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.