biography
“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music” – Gustav Mahler
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” – Laurie Anderson
Israeli-born composer and singer/songwriter Ayala Asherov-Kalus, resident of Charleston, South Carolina, is a recipient of the 2011 and 2012 ASCAPlus Award, winner of the 2011 Chamber Music Composition Award at the biennial Athena Music Festival, and 2010 recipient of the Wild Acres Residency. She is a member of ASCAP, The American Composers Forum, ACUM and ICL. Having been raised in a family of actors and directors (her grandparents were among the founders of the Habima National Theater of Israel), she tends toward the dramatic in her music, which ranges from songwriting to programmatic music in the concert hall, and to multimedia including film, museum exhibitions and compositions inspired by the written word. She received her Bachelor of Music Summa Cum Laude in composition and film scoring from the Berklee College of Music in 1998, and her Masters of Music in film scoring from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2000.She has written musical scores for The Learning Channel, Discovery Channel and National Geographic. She has underscored exhibits at the Jerusalem Theater (“Poetry and Pictures”), the Boston Aquarium and the Gesher Museum in Israel (“The Naharayim Experience”), combining live music, electronics, sound effects and interactive multimedia presentation. Her songs are published and recorded by many celebrated Israeli artists.
Her best known song, lyrics and music, “Along the Sea” (“Le’Orech Ha Yam”), was recorded by Ofra Haza in 1994, and is one of the most recorded songs in Israel. Ayala released her debut CD, “Crossing the River” in 2007. She has appeared and performed in Tel Aviv, Columbia, South Carolina, and at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina and continues to perform her own material on the piano.
In 2012 Ayala is working on the score for “Second Act”, a six part documentary mini series about the Israeli National Theater for Israel Educational Television. In 2010 Ayala scored “The Forgotten Founder”, part of the South Carolina ETV documentary series, Carolina Stories, which aired in October, 2010. Also from the Carolina Stories documentary series, Ayala finished scoring, “The Baruchs of Hobcaw” to be aired in November 2011. Her trio, “Three Rivers” for clarinet, viola, and piano, was released on “Claviatures” by Navona Records/Parma Recordings in October, 2011. She has been commissioned to compose a song cycle for mezzo soprano Janet Hopkins for voice violin and cello – the Children of Terezin – for the Opera–tunity foundation on Holocust memorial day, to be performed on April 18, 2012.
