Aaron Nichols (he/him, 2003) is a composer from New York City whose creative output includes concert, electronic, and film music. Compelled both by his admiration of traditional classical and jazz formal rhetoric, and his desire to undermine it, his works explore the surreal, the absurd, and the uncanny. Inspired largely by his background in theater, and his interest in film, Aaron’s music is very often loosely programmatic, with music built often around the mimicry of concepts. Examples of this include his composition “On a Scale of 1-10” for cello and electric guitar, which attempts to describe the gradual numbing and alteration of physical pain, and “Overstimulations” for strings, percussion, and live electronics, which describes different states of overstimulation, largely based on his own experience as an autistic person placed in uncomfortable environments. He has written scores to several student films and documentaries, as well as notable silent films such as Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov) and Metropolis (Fritz Lang).

His work has seen recent premieres by PRISM Quartet and Unheard-of Ensemble, and readings by the Manhattan Brass Quintet, the Mivos Quartet, the Bergamot Quartet, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, among others. He has received first prize in the Ensemble Ibis Competition for student composers, commissioned by the MATA Jr. festival, two distinctive mentions by the Robert Avalon composition competition, and he was a finalist for the Morton Gould Student Composers’ Awards in 2025. Aaron Nichols is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in music composition at Oberlin Conservatory, studying under professors Stephen Hartke, Jesse Jones, and Michael Frazier.