“Armando Bayolo is a tireless advocate for others’ music. His persuasive style as an essayist and esteemed work as the conductor of Washington, DC’s Great Noise Ensemble could easily overshadow his own compositions, if they weren’t so attractive in their own right. Armando’s music combines the audacity of popular music, the verve-filled rhyth- mic language of Latin America, and the pugnacity of postmodern classicism into a heady, formidable concoction.”
–Christian Carey, Sequenza21.

Born in 1973 in Santurce, Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, composer Armando Bayolo be-gan musical studies at the age of twelve. At sixteen he went on to study at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, where he first began the serious study of composition. He holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M. 1995), where his teachers were Samuel Adler, Joseph Schwantner and Christopher Rouse; Yale University (M.M. 1997), where he studied with Roberto Sierra, Jacob Druckman, Ingram Marshall and Martin Bresnick; and the University of Michigan (D.M.A. 2001) where he studied with Michael Daugherty, Bright Sheng and Evan Chambers.
Mr. Bayolo’s music, which the Washington Post hailed as radiant and ethereal, “full of lush ideas and a kind of fierce grandeur (which unfold) with subtle, driving power;” and which the Charlotte Observer says “deserves to be played many more times and in many more places” encompasses a wide variety of genres including works for solo instruments, voices, chamber and orchestral music. Recent premiere performances include Orfei Mors by cellist Phillip von Maltzahn and the Society for New Music (Syracuse) and the Western Piedmont Symphony Orchestra; Kaddish:Passio:Rothko by the chorus and orchestra of the National Gallery of Art; Mix Tape by National Symphony Orchestra bassist and Peabody Institute professor Jeffrey Weisner; Absolute Music for trombone and orchestra with trombonist Philip Brown and the South Jutlands Symphony Orchestra of Soderborg, Denmark, who commissioned the work, under the direction of Maximiano Valdés; Caprichos by the ensemble Hexnut as part of the Karnatic Lab series in Amsterdam as well as various festival appearances throughout Holland; and Los Conquistadores by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Maximiano Valdés, conducting. The 2011-12 season will see with the premiere performance of Lullabies, for baritone, clarinet and piano by the Trio Montage in October at Weill Hall in Carnegie Concert Hall in New York and the premiere of his third symphony, Symphony: Savage Howls by the University of Oregon Wind Ensemble, Robert Ponto, conductor as well as performances of A Kind of Standoff by pianist May Phang and the DePauw University Percussion Ensemble, Amy Lynne Barber, director, during the ensemble’s tour of China in January.
Mr. Bayolo’s recent commissions include Lullabies, for Marguerite Levin and Trio Montage; Symphony: Savage Howls for a consortium led by the University of Oregon Wind Ensemble, Robert Ponto, director; Little Black Book, commissioned by the Fromm Foundation for guitarist D.J. Sparr ; Absolute Music, a concerto for trombonist Philip Brown and the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra of Denmark; Caprichos for the Dutch group Hexnut, Ned McGowan, Artistic Director; Orfei Mors for Philip von Malt-zahn, the Western Piedmont Symphony, John Gordon Ross, Music Director and the Syracuse Society for New Music, Neva Pilgrim, Artistic Director; Kaddish:Passio:Rothko, for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra for the Music Department of the National Gallery of Art; Crudely Spun Tales for Pictures on Silence; Mix Tape, for bassist Jeffrey Weisner; and Sacred Cows, a cantata for soprano, baritone, three back-up singers and large ensemble for Great Noise Ensemble. Upcoming commissions include a new work for piano and electronics for pianist Kathleen Supove; a major solo organ work for organist David Troiano; a choral work for Volti and Orfeon San Juan Bautista; a new work for the new music “super group,” The Deviant Septet; and a major work for large ensemble commissioned for Great Noise Ensemble by the music department of the National Gallery of Art in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the opening of its east building.
Mr. Bayolo is the founder, Artistic Director and conductor of Great Noise Ensemble, which in just seven seasons has become one of the most important forces in contemporary music in the Washington, D.C. region. He has led Great Noise in several world and regional premieres both by composers as diverse as emerging talents Joel Puckett, D.J. Sparr, Robert Paterson, Ken Ueno, Carlos Carrillo, and established masters like John Adams, Michael Daugherty, Steve Reich, John Luther Adams, Frederic Rzweski, Poul Ruders, and Louis Andriessen, whose opera, De Materie, he is one of only two American conductor to have led. Recently, Mr. Bayolo was named Curator for New Music by the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, for whom he is developing a new music concert series beginning during the 2011-12 concert season, featuring artists such as the Imani Winds, Janus Trio and the string quartet Ethel.
Mr. Bayolo has been featured on Public Radio International’s Studio 360 broadcast out of WNYC in New York and on the NPR program Fresh Ink broadcast out of WCNY in Syracuse as well as the Washington Post and the New York Times’ Opinionator Blog. He has also contributed articles to New Music Box and Sequenza21, where he is a Contributing Editor. As an educator, he has served on the faculties of Reed College and Hamilton College where he served as a Consortium for a Strong Minority Presence Fellow from 2006-2008 as well as the music theory faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Bayolo is the recipient 2008 Brandon Fradd fellowship in music from the Cintas Foundation and has received grants and awards from the Fromm Music Foundation of Harvard University, the states of Iowa and North Carolina arts council, Hamilton College, the Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute and the American Composers Forum. He lives outside of Washington, D.C. with his wife and two daughters.