Emily Erekson is a NYC based composer, performer and educator who enjoys engaging with music as if she were in a giant laboratory. As a college student, she acquired a dilapidated grand piano and founded The Dead Piano Society, where she and her friends would gather around the soundboard and experiment with extended techniques and new sonic textures. This was just the beginning of what would become a pattern in her career of creating collaborative musical communities that come together, experiment and improvise. Her compositions are natural outgrowths from her penchant for connecting with others and her desire to explore and discover.
An accomplished and passionately eclectic pianist, Erekson has performed jazz at the Julliard Jazz Festival at Snow College and chamber music in Paris with the European American Music Alliance. She’s performedhad solo classical appearances, where she’s championed the works of living composers at Mannes School of Music, Brigham Young University, Southern Utah University and the International Music Academy in the Czech Republic. Her indie-rock band, Aspartame Sunshine, has performed at Provo’s The Velour, the Utah Governor’s Mansion, the Utah State Capitol, the LDS Conference Center and was recently featured on The Mormon Channel, while her punk-rock band, Digital Black, toured across Utah and opened for several major acts, including Neon Trees.
Erekson is also a devoted educator. She taught piano and ear-training classes at BYU and was the music specialist at Carden Memorial School, where she developed a music curriculum for over 250 students. She maintains an active private studio and also presents musical workshops with her husband at grade schools in NYC in attempts to make music education and training more available to lower-income communities. She has an MM in piano performance at BYU, where she studied piano with Irene Peery-Fox and Scott Holden, and composition with Nicholas Giusti and Christian Asplund.