Lydia Ayers

Lydia Ayers (22 Aug 1952, Endwell, NY — Jan 2022, Hong Kong) was an American freelance composer, flutist, gamelan performer, and computer musician who specialized in microtonal tunings, particularly unlimited just intonation. Since 1996, she has permanently resided in Hong Kong, where she taught at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and was The Chinese University Of Hong Kong's Postdoctoral Fellow. In the 1970s, while studying at the California Institute Of The Arts, Ayers began to develop her love for microtonality. She extensively researched works of Harry Partch and Indian, Indonesian, and Arabic microtonal systems, further discovering even more experimental and unconventional tunings via Erv Wilson, who collaborated with several CalArts-affiliated composers and percussionists. In 1977, Ayers wrote a piece, "Ombres de la Lune," for one of Wilson's original instruments, HelixSong, made of two-inch aluminum tubing. It was performed by percussionist Todd Manley. In later years, she owned a 75-tone Indian/Partch scale Woodstock Gamelan, a custom-built tubular percussion instrument. After receiving her BFA degree from CalArts in 1984, Lydia Ayers relocated to New York City. She was an artist-in-residence at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1990 and acquired a DMA degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1994. Predominantly working in Csound on the NeXT computer, Lydia Ayers composed computer music with unlimited just intonation, re-creating numerous Indonesian, Native American, Australian, and Chinese instruments digitally. She also wrote acoustic music, including over 30 solo and ensemble works for flutes. Ayers performed on a wide range of flutes from various cultural traditions, utilizing extended vocal and woodwind techniques: quarter tones, multiphonics, buzz tones and other unusual flute timbres. Ayers frequently collaborated with her husband Andrew Horner — co-chairing the 1996 International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong and publishing the book Cooking with Csound: Woodwind and Brass Recipes together in 2002. Lydia passed away in her Hong Kong residence after a lengthy battle with cancer.