Composer/performer David Vayo (b. 1957) is the Fern Rosetta Sherff Professor of Composition and Theory, Emeritus at Illinois Wesleyan University. During his three decades at IWU he taught composition, improvisation and contemporary music and hosted close to two hundred guest composers, performers, ensembles and scholars. Vayo also taught at Connecticut College, and in Costa Rica at the National University and the National Symphony Orchestra Youth Program.
Among the distinctive features of Vayo’s catalog are ten pieces for traditional Chinese and Japanese instruments, six “musical poetry readings”, three pieces for live synthesizer, and six for instruments with electronic sound or enhancement. Vayo’s fascination with unusual instruments has led to compositions for extended-range glockenspiel; contrabassoon and three double basses; bass viola da gamba; hammered dulcimer; and ships’ horns. His theatrical works include the opera Fertile Ground; the performance piece Eight Poems of William Carlos Williams for trombonist; and Chambers, a unique musical ritual in which the audience plays integral roles as sound-makers and active listeners. Jazz, a strong element of Vayo’s musical identity, appears in both subtle and straightforward ways in many of his concert compositions, and explicitly in such pieces as Entelechy for fusion-jazz quartet, Reach for big band, Signals for woodwinds, brass, piano and bass, and the piano pieces We Will, Ours and Jazz Jig for Jim.
Vayo performs on piano, keyboard harmonica, synthesizer and voice; his repertoire encompasses new and old concert music, jazz, popular music, personal interpretations of music from folk traditions, and free improvisations. Since 2022 he has presented intimate themed concerts at his home which draw on all of these sources.
Vayo holds an A.Mus.D. in Composition from The University of Michigan, where his principal teachers were Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom; his M. Mus. and B. Mus. degrees are from Indiana University, where he studied with Frederick Fox and Juan Orrego-Salas. Vayo’s principal piano teachers were Marie Zorn, Michel Kozlovsky and John Ogdon at Indiana, and Lynne Bartholomew at Michigan; his undergraduate degree was a double major in Composition and Jazz Studies.
