Ari Sussman

Praised for his work that “weave(s) a trance-like mystical aura” (Zamir Chorale), Ari Sussman (b. 1993) is a Philadelphia born and Ann Arbor based pianist, clawhammer banjoist, and composer of vocal, chamber, orchestral, choral, and electronic music. Kabbalah, nature, cosmology, meditation, metaphysics, ancient and contemporary poetry, the human condition, and human interactions are among Sussman's non-musical influences and interests. As a result, Sussman's music illustrates equivocal worlds of sounds that are ambient, euphonious, and ethereal in nature.

Sussman has won awards from the University of Michigan, the Guild of Temple Musicians, and the American Composers Forum. He was also a recipient of a 2018 BMI Student Composer Award and a ‘First Music’ commission from the New York Youth Symphony. He has studied composition at the New England Conservatory of Music (BM/MM), the Tanglewood Music Center (‘19 Leonard Bernstein Fellow), and the University of Michigan where he is currently pursuing his DMA and studying with Evan Chambers and Kristin Kuster.