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Alejandro T. Acierto is an active soloist, collaborative chamber musician, improviser, and composer whose innovative work in contemporary music and performance has led Time-Out New York to call him a “maverick" of new music. He is a performer of international reach who has played throughout the US and Europe in such venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, Symphony Center in Chicago, Symphony Space in New York, the Green Mill, Issue Project Room, Galapagos Art Space, the Tank, the Stone, the Kauffman Center, Elastic Arts Space, and various other galleries, warehouses, and non-traditional performance venues such as Heaven Gallery, Snow’s Basement, Gallerie Icosahedron, and the Brecht Forum. He is a founding member of the New York-based ai ensemble, a new music ensemble for clarinets, violin, cello, piano and percussion and the Chicago-based chamber orchestra ensemble dal niente. He is also a member of the New York-based groups Loadbang, Opera Cabal, ThingNY, and improvising groups Absent Material and STEREO. He has appeared as a guest with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and CUBE, and has worked alongside sopranos Tony Arnold and Lucy Shelton. Acierto has also played internationally in several festivals such as the Darmstadt Summer Course in Germany, the International Ensemble Modern Academy Festival in Schwatz, Austria and the Sonic Impact Festival in Chicago. Additionally, he recently won the Lilian Fuchs Chamber Music Competition and was awarded honorable mention in the annual Concerto Competition for Contemporary Music at Manhattan School of Music. Committed to performing new works by emerging composers, Acierto has worked with several composers and given over 100 local and world premieres to date, many which have been written expressively for him including works by Jason Eckart, Lee Hyla, Liza Lim, Johannes Maria Staud, Martin Matalon and Kirsten Broberg as well as several other emerging composers whose pieces he has premiered. He has also curated the twenty minute Power Concert Series at Manhattan School of Music that provides a venue for contemporary and experimental music, performance and works in progress. As a composer, Acierto embraces an ambiguous aesthetic that integrates music, sound, performance art, and installation based on historical narratives and people’s stories. His works have been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, ThingNY, Loadbang, and the Student New Music Ensemble at DePaul. He recently won the Sidney and Mary Kleinman Prize in Composition for his work strangers in our own land and was granted a composers’ residency fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada. Additionally, Acierto’s work has also recently been published by Trifecta Publishing in their premiere edition for art of various artistic mediums. Acierto holds a Masters’ degree in Contemporary Performance from Manhattan School of Music and received his Bachelors’ degree in clarinet performance and composition with a minor in Asian American Studies from DePaul University. His principal teachers include David Krakauer, John B. Yeh, Julie DeRoche, Wagner Campos and composers Reiko Fueting, Kurt Westerberg and Juan Campoverde.