Eleanor Aversa

Associate Professor
Affiliated Departments
Composition
eaversa@berklee.edu
Telephone
617-747-6714
Personal Websites
Eleanor Aversa's website

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Career Highlights
  • Yearlong composer residency with San Francisco Choral Artists (2012–2013)
  • Orchestrator for the track “Flaming June” on Electronic Opus by BT (released in 2016)
  • Research and writing about the psychology of music published in Music Theory Online and presented at the Society for Music Perception and Cognition
  • Dissertation: Open Doors, recorded by the Curtis Symphony Orchestra
  • Former piano faculty of the Settlement Music School
  • Commissions from Amuse Inc., the American Composers Forum, the I-Park Foundation, and choreographer Danuta-Petrow Sek with a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts
Awards
  • Mass Cultural Council Grant, 2023
  • ASCAP Plus Awards, 2021, 2012, 2011
  • Berklee Faculty Recording Grant, 2020
  • Berklee Faculty Fellowship, 2017
  • Grant from the American Composers Forum, 2012
  • Composer Not-in-Residence, San Francisco Choral Artists, 2012–2013
  • I-Park Foundation Fellowship, 2012
  • MacDowell Fellowship, 2011
  • Northridge Composition Prize, California State University, Northridge, 2010
  • David Halstead Prize, the University of Pennsylvania, 2010
  • First Prize, New Voices Competition, San Francisco Choral Artists, 2009
  • Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, 2009
  • Brian M. Israel Prize, the New York Federation of Music Clubs, 2008
  • Marvin Hamlisch Composition Award, CUNY Queens College, 2008
  • Grant from Queens Council on the Arts, New York City, 2007
Education
  • University of Pennsylvania
    Pennsylvania
    Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
    Composition
  • CUNY Queens College
    New York
    Master of Arts (M.A.)
    Composition
  • Princeton University
    New Jersey
    Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
    Slavic Languages and Literatures
In Their Own Words

“In my classes, we ask: ‘How wasn’t this piece written?’ We select a passage, then at the piano I change one element at a time: I invert a certain chord, or I resolve a tension a few beats earlier, or I take out a jump in register. We discuss each compositional choice and how it contributes to making the passage effective.”

“Many times, a great musical moment is at once both surprising and inevitable. How do composers achieve this? By learning harmony and counterpoint, a composer knows how musical patterns and tendencies work: the “rules” of music that most listeners only recognize subconsciously. If you keep enough patterns while breaking others, you can write pieces that 'make sense' on first hearing, pieces that will hold listeners’ interest even as you take them to weird and unexpected places. For performers, knowing how musical expectations work gives you insights like which notes to lean into or where you might want to linger on a phrase.”

"Another theme you will hear in my classes is that some of our reactions to music transcend culture and training. That scary, pounding bass you hear in most movie trailers? That taps into our deepest instincts: all mammals fear loud, low sounds. There are other universal principles, too: reasons that war songs, lullabies, and laments can be recognized as such worldwide. When you put all this knowledge together—human universals plus the principles of common practice music—you have a truly formidable toolbox for composing and interpreting music."