We Were Not Born To Survive: an interview with pianist and composer Aaron Wyanski
Most pianists find their way into 20th century music through older classical repertoire. Aaron Wyanski did the opposite. A self-confessed jazz nerd who thought it was “really lame to have to write music down”, he was introduced to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire on the same day in a western music history class and they blew his mind. Since that fateful day, Wyanski has become known for his work spanning jazz and contemporary classical music, most notably his Schoenberg in Hi-Fi project in which he reimagines Schoenberg’s music through the lens of America’s hi-fi boom.
We Were Not Born to Survive blends these elements together and places the listener in the heart of the creative process. Comprised entirely of improvisations Wyanksi recorded in six sessions over a three week period, this album highlights music captured in the moment of creation. And with Wyanski’s fearless exploration and his rock solid sense of pulse, each track offers discovery, curiosity, and the assurance that in his capable hands something interesting and satisfying will be found. It is an honor to feature Aaron Wyanski and We Were Not Born to Survive on No Dead Guys.
When did you first become interested in making music and what was your first instrument?
When I was a very small child, the video I demanded to watch on repeat was a VHS copy of Stevie Ray Vaughan on Austin City Limits. I had a fake plastic guitar, a wooden microphone my dad made for me, and a cowboy hat, and I would copy this performance–especially the part where he plays the guitar behind his head–for any captive audience I could find. This was probably the first indication that I might become a musician. It wasn’t until I was around 12 years old that I received an actual guitar and started taking lessons.
Piano came later, when I was already enrolled in a college music program as a guitar major. I needed more elective credits and decided to get them by taking piano lessons, which at the time I thought of merely as a tool for theory. As corny as it sounds, I fell quickly and head over heels in love with the piano, in a way I’d never felt about guitar, and made the decision to switch majors only about six weeks into lessons. I haven’t looked back.
When did you begin improvising and composing and what was the name of the first piece you wrote?
I started improvising as soon as I started playing the guitar. In high school I formed a little jazz group where we hacked our way through standards, and I made my first attempts at simple arrangements. The drummer and I would also frequently get together and freely improvise, which for about a week–with the hubris specific to teenagers–we thought we had invented as a concept.
There were little tunes here and there, and I contributed to original material in bands I was a part of, but I wouldn’t really compose anything in any genre until I was almost 30. The first piece I can remember was a short set of piano variations on the James Brown song Hot Pants titled What You See is What You Get.
When did you become interested in new music, especially challenging composers such as Schoenberg?
Before college I was exclusively a jazz nerd. I loved all eras and styles of jazz, but everything else–classical, rock, pop, etc–was trash to me. I had a particular bone to pick with classical music because at that time I had decided it was really lame to have to write music down.
In my first year of undergrad, I had to take a year-long western music history class, which I was initially not thrilled about. In the first two weeks of the course, the professor did a rapid overview of the entire year, before we would go back to plainchant and move chronologically. I’m forever grateful for this pedagogical move because it meant that in the second week of classes, I got to hear The Rite of Spring and Pierrot Lunaire on the same day. It is a gross understatement to say that hearing these pieces blew my mind. That I could love this music so much, so quickly, made me realize that I must be just plain wrong about classical music as a whole, and the class that I had been dreading became one I eagerly looked forward to. I became like a sponge. So it was actually through the more “challenging” composers that I found my way to the rest of the canon.
One of the things that intrigues me about your career are your Schoenberg in Hi-Fi recordings which blend Schoenberg’s atonal works with mid-century lounge jazz. How did you conceive of this project and what has been the response to these albums?
Schoenberg is a real labor of love, but it started innocently and by accident. Schoenberg’s music is very close to me and has long been important to my musical life. I’ve also had a relationship with mid-century popular music–especially the subset that is often labeled “lounge,” “exotica,” or “space-age pop”–ever since Capitol began releasing the Ultra Lounge series of compilation CDs in the late 90s. I don’t think I’d take a bullet for this music, the way I would for say The Rite of Spring, but I’ve always found it extremely joyful and deeply interesting. I’ve collected many records over the years and it’s my go-to music for any party or gathering I throw.
A very specific targeted ad sold me a sample library geared towards emulating this genre, and even though I had worked very little with samples at that point, I was excited to try it out. The score to Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19 happened to be next to my desk, so for whatever reason, I started playing it into my computer to hear it played back with various instruments against various latin rhythms.
That this radical reinterpretation “worked” was a total surprise. And beyond that, it began teaching me more about these Schoenberg works that I had already performed as a pianist and knew very well. I eventually imagined a speculative universe where a mid-century record executive decided to try to market Schoenberg’s work as exotic, new sounds to middle-class America, in the same way they sold various non-western musics, stereophonic effects, and new electronic instruments.
At first, I was positive no one wanted to hear these arrangements besides myself. I was also worried that they would be taken purely ironically. But a couple of close friends convinced me they were worth sharing widely, and I couldn’t be happier to have been wrong. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and I feel very lucky to have received support from some of the people most invested in Schoenberg’s legacy, including the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.
In addition to Schoenberg, what composers have most influenced your music?
This is an unbelievably hard question because there are too many! Here’s a messy list:
Duke Ellington, Bach, Morton Feldman, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Brahms, Thelonious Monk, Charles Ives, George Perle, Louise Talma, John Mallia, Gilda Lyons, Roger Zahab, Robert Carl, Ken Steen, John Cage, Alban Berg, Daniel Godsil, Anton Webern, György Ligeti, Kyle Grimm, Ornette Coleman.
Congratulations on the release of We Were Not Born to Survive, your first album devoted entirely to free improvisation! As both a composer and an improviser, what do improvised works offer listeners that they can’t find in fully composed pieces?
I think there can be less of a division between performer and listener with improvised works. The act of improvisation necessitates close listening on the part of the performer, whether they are improvising alone or in a group. This means that the very first audience for an improvised work is the musicians performing it, which invites all subsequent listeners–either in the room in the moment, or listening to a recording later–to identify more closely to the performers than they might otherwise. Listening to improvisation is like eavesdropping. You get to hear the musician’s unfiltered reactions in real time. I think there’s something palpable in that experience even for listeners who don’t play music themselves.
I understand that you recorded all of the pieces onWe Were Not Born to Survive yourself, on a friend’s piano. Were you planning to release them as an album at that time, or was that something you decided to do after listening to them?
There was no plan at the start. I had the opportunity to spend some time on a piano far nicer than the one I have at home, so I started recording myself. After a few days like this, I realized there might be an album, but that emerged organically just from playing and spending time with the instrument.
How did you decide which improvisations were worthy of being released to the public and which ones weren’t?
We Were Not Born to Survive was culled from six long sessions, so there was a lot of material to sift through. There were a few that became quick favorites of mine, like Hop to It, and then it was a slow process of listening to the rest and building a combination of performances that made a compelling album sequence. In one case where there were two improvisations of approximately the same length and overall affect, I got the opinion of a close musical friend.
One of the things I find fascinating about this music is how structure seems to emerge from searching. What would you be willing to share about your seed ideas for these pieces and how they evolved?
There were genuinely no plans for any of the pieces on this album before my hands hit the keys. As such, the structures all came about from trying to sustain whatever musical gestures I opened with and doing my best to remember what I’ve already played. I often give myself loose constraints on the fly. On Hop to It, after playing the opening cluster-filled block chords, a clear image came into my head of a video of Jaki Byard playing in Berlin in 1965, so in a way that piece became an attempt to capture some of the essence of Byard’s feel and touch. The Splurge was thought of as a conversation between my hands, but strictly in time. It Won’t Come True is based entirely on the opening three-note motif, which I later connected to the melody of the jazz standard Darn That Dream, and I stole its title from the lyrics. Moments like the recapitulation in Absence Without a Thought occurred spontaneously because I heard them and not through any prior formal planning.
I’m extremely impressed by how solidly you maintain the pulse and a swing feel while improvising, especially in “The Splurge.” In what ways does this provide structure in improvisation?
Thank you! I take this as a huge compliment because it’s something I’ve had to work on really intentionally. Committing to a time feel is one of the oldest and most effective ways of providing structure in performance. It maintains the ancient connection of music with movement and dance, even when the music is very abstract. As a performer it also can help me get my ego out of the way. I have to make choices that keep the music swinging, and that makes it not entirely about me.
I’m also impressed by your use of silences in these improvised pieces, especially in “Hop to It” where it acts as a sort of punctuation to the notes. What would you be willing to share about your relationship with silence, especially while improvising?
This is an interesting question because I think about silence a ton in my compositions, but I haven’t specifically thought about it in relation to improvisation before. Music is both strange and powerful because of its inherent connection to time. Music makes time passing feel different, and time passing is existence itself. Silence can serve many functions in a musical context, but I think generally musical silence is about allowing. Allowing time to take up space. Inviting us to be patient. A great performance, in any art form, is about holding space. At the risk of getting too philosophical, silence in music can also be about non-duality–I’m playing the piano both when I’m making a sound and when I’m not.
What current or future plans are you most excited about?
I’m currently working on a commission from the Philadelphia-based ensemble Network for New Music, who will be premiering one of my new Schoenberg arrangements alongside a new original composition in April 2027. Up till now, Schoenberg in Hi-Fi has existed in its own separate lane inside my career, and I’m excited to see what happens when it comes into contact with my composition practice. Network for New Music is also a phenomenal group of musicians, and I’m thrilled to be working with them.
What advice do you offer students who seek to pursue careers in music?
Keep going. It sounds trite, and too simplistic, but if there’s one key, I think it’s just don’t stop. There’s no one way to have a music career, which is both great news and overwhelming. Say yes to as much as you can, especially in the beginning. This is how you learn who you are as a musician. And don’t wait for permission. Make your own opportunities with whatever resources you have around you. That’s a lesson I wish I’d learned much earlier. A composer friend of mine and I often say to each other encouragingly: “the people who do things are the people who do things.” I don’t mean to sugarcoat the very real challenges of a creative life, but we often make those challenges much harder than they need be by how we relate to them and how much we identify with them.
Aaron Wyanski is a composer, pianist, and educator who combines elements of jazz, classical, mid-century lounge, and free improvisation to create a deeply personal artistic voice that explores memory, perspective, and vulnerability.
His song cycle Three Benedictions was premiered at Carnegie Hall by Yoon Sun Choi and Jacob Sacks, and he has been a featured composer at New Music Miami and the Hartford New Music Festival. He has been commissioned by many ensembles and performers including Duo Refracta, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Roger Zahab, Krista Kopper, and the Amaranth Quartet. Wyanski has been awarded several residencies by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as grants from the Richard Kountz Fund and the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.
Wyanski coined the title “speculative musicologist” to describe his ongoing project Schoenberg in Hi-Fi–a series of albums and performances that explore a speculative reality in which Schoenberg’s music was intentionally marketed as “new sounds” as part of the LP boom in midcentury America. The project has been described as “a truly unexpected development,” “a party I’m sorry I missed,” and “a true masterpiece of sonic exploration” by the blogs Transitional Technology, Slippedisc, and Planet Singer respectively. Wyanski’s arrangement of Schonberg’s Variations for Orchestra, Op.31 was featured at the closing concert of the UNESCO Week of Sound Festival in Edinburgh in 2025, performed by PlusMinus Ensemble.
An active educator, Wyanski is currently a lecturer at Saint Anselm College, and maintains a small private studio. He is also Academic Director for the Monson Seminar, a residential course for Pell-eligible and first-generation college students that he co-founded with Kristen Case, in partnership with Monson Arts. Previous positions include Assistant Professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, and adjunct faculty at Sweet Briar College and the Hartt School. He holds a DMA in Music Composition from the Hartt School, an MFA in Music Composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a BM in Jazz Studies from Purchase College, and an AS in Music Performance from Schenectady County Community College, where he was selected as one of fifty distinguished alumni as part of SCCC’s 50th anniversary celebrations.