On Monday, Feb. 3, the Monday Night Concert Series will feature a performance by ASCAP Award winning composer and singer/songwriter, Ayala Asherov. The program will include her own works. The concert will take place at 8 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 Saint Philip Street. Admission is $10 cash or check at the door and free for College of Charleston students with I.D.
[Read about Asherov in The Post and Courier, 12/29/13]
Ayala Asherov-Kalus started writing songs at age 16. She studied at the Rimon School of Music in Tel Aviv and then attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she received her Bachelor of Music Summa Cum Laude in composition and film scoring. She went on to receive her Master of Film Scoring at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Asherov’s music ranges from songwriting to music in the concert hall, and to multimedia including film, museum exhibitions and dance. Her songs are published and recorded by many celebrated Israeli artists. Her best known song, lyrics and music, “Le’Orech Ha Yam” (“Along the Sea”), was recorded by Ofra Haza in 1994, and is one of the most recorded songs in modern Israeli musical history. She also recorded a duet with Israel’s most celebrated singer, the late Arik Einstein. In 2007, she released her debut CD, “Crossing the River,” performing her songs also at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in 2010 and in 2013. She composed the scores for “The Forgotten Founder,” and “The Baruchs of Hobcaw,” both for the South Carolina ETV (PBS) documentary series, Carolina Stories. In September 2013 “Cycles of the Moon,” a solo album of her chamber music works, was released by Navona Records under the Nexus label, with 7 new original compositions performed by an array of international musicians.
She is a 2010 recipient of the Wild Acres Residency, winner of the 2011 Chamber Music Composition Award at the biennial Athena Music Festival, and winner of the ASCA Plus Award in 2011 and 2012. She was a 2012-2013 recipient of the South Carolina Film Commission Indie Grants Award for “PencilPoint,” an animated short film with orchestral score, performed by the College of Charleston Orchestra (under Yuriy Bekker), and was selected as 2013 S.C. Music Teachers Association Commissioned Composer.
This year she has started a project which she conceived, “Music Tells The Story,” with Communities in Schools and a grant from the Addlestone Foundation, reaching out as a composer with CSO musicians to challenged public schools to help young students better understand literature and music.
Asherov currently teaches songwriting at the College of Charleston.