Armando Bayolo

Armando Bayolo is a composer whose music ranges from the audacious to the playful to the beautifully lyrical. His belief that all art is communication is manifested by creating music that reflects the world in which we live: life’s joy and grief, triumphs and challenges, and the social and political trials and triumphs we all face on a daily basis find a voice in his work. His Cancionero de luto, a lyrical meditation on death, is filled with a “high degree of poetic expressiveness” (Music Web International); his saxophone quartet, A Play of Shadows, combines “the audacity of popular music, the verve-filled rhythmic language of Latin America, and the pugnacity of postmodern classicism” (Sequenza21); and Last Breaths, a setting of the last words of black men murdered by police, gives voice to their rage with the kind of “fierce grandeur” and “driving power” (The Washington Post) for which his music has been praised.

Armando fell in love with music at age four, when he first heard an orchestra in the score to Star Wars. As a teenager he asked his mother (a pianist) for lessons in order to start a synth pop band. But, he was soon bitten by the classical bug when his piano teacher assigned him “Fur Elise” and introduced him to Beethoven. When, at age 14, he lost his father suddenly to heart disease, he found solace in music studies. His musical world opened up dramatically when, at 16, he attended the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, where he stayed to complete his high school studies with an intense focus on music. He went on to receive degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Yale University, and the University of Michigan. In 2005, he founded Great Noise Ensemble in Washington, DC, and led the ensemble as Artistic Director for 15 years, presenting contemporary music to audiences throughout the DC region and the rest of the U.S. He currently serves on the faculty of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his wife and two cats.