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Israeli-born composer and singer/songwriter Ayala Asherov-Kalus is a recipient of the 2011 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 AMC, Israel composers’league ICL, and ACUM. Raised in a family of actors and directors, she notes her grandparents were among the founders of the Habima National Theater of Israel. As a composer, Ayala’s music ranges from songwriting to programmatic music in the concert hall to multimedia, including film scoring, 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, and underscored exhibits at the Jerusalem Theater (“Poetry and Pictures”), Boston Aquarium combining live music, electronics, and sound effects, and the interactive multimedia presentation, “The Naharayim Experience," at the Gesher Museum in Israel. As a songwriter, her songs are published, recorded, and released 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 in 2008, and continues to perform her own material on the piano.
In 2011 Ayala completed the score for Second Act, a six-part documentary series about the Israeli National Theater for Israel Educational Television. Ayala scored “The Forgotten Founder”, part of the
South Carolina ETV documentary series, Carolina Stories, which aired in October 2010. Her trio, “Three Rivers” for clarinet, viola, and piano, will be released by Navona Records/Parma Recordings in 2011.
Ayala continues to compose by commission, and collaborate with performers. She enjoys her unique ability as a songwriter to write songs (music and lyrics) tailor made by request. She is to score an ETV documentary, part of the South Carolina series, "Carolina Stories," in September 2011.
Annual Updates
2012
NEWS
Ayala Asherov-Kalus now resides in Charleston, SC. Her film score for Carolina Stories: The Baruchs of Hobcaw, first heard on SCETV, Nov. 2011; she is developing the score for small chamber ensemble. Asherov-Kalus has finished a quartet for violin, viola, cello, and piano and is working on a song cycle, The Children of Terezin, written for mezzo-soprano Janet Hopkins, set to poems by children of the concentration camp Terezin who perished in the Holocaust. She will perform her own songs as a singer-songwriter, March 2012.
PREMIERES
Children of Terezin, a song cycle for mezzo-soprano Janet Hopkins, Columbia, SC, April 2012.
PERFORMANCES
Yizkor (Remember), Columbia, SC, April 2011, Sept. 2011.
PUBLICATIONS
Winters, Quartet for violin, viola, cello and piano.
RECORDINGS
Three Rivers, trio for clarinet, viola and piano, on the CD Claviatures, Navona Records.