John Aylward, it is a pleasure to e-meet you! A warm welcome to this interview with the World Film Festival in Cannes. You won the award for Best Musical Film. Please accept all our congratulations. What would be your message to the festival and your audience in France and internationally?
Thank you for that warm welcome. I am honored that Oblivion won Best Musical Film at the World Film Festival in Cannes this year, and to all those in France and internationally, I would say thank you so much for your interest and support. Independent films are not easy to get off the ground, and it’s the kind of love and warmth from all corners of the globe that make film projects like Oblivion worthwhile.
According to The Boston Globe, your music is “delicate and deep, all at once”, and Gramophone has called Aylward’s music “mysterious, iridescent and daring”. Would you care to discuss such awesome accolades?
That’s very kind of you. I am always thrilled when a major reviewer takes note of what I’m doing. So often, composers and artists work without much recognition. As I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve realized that I’m trying to thread a needle between being a little surreal but relatable, and I think that critics have been picking up on that fine line. I’m glad they’re encouraging audiences to get to know the work – I want to share it!
This opera explores the idea that the afterlife is the expression of our conceptions of a post-apocalyptic world. How did you arrive at a choice of score for this theme, and where did you draw your inspiration from? Do you consider that humanity could be currently going through what Nietzsche saw as the pre-apocalyptic era, fraught with war and earthquakes?
It’s interesting you bring up Nietzsche. I just finished an orchestral work based around his concept of the “Eternal Return.” I do think that we are living through a very palpable moment in a larger human cycle. You touch on the similarity between our conception of the afterlife and our ideas of apocalypse or revelation. These may be more connected than we think. The original idea of the apocalypse is a revealing or pulling back of the curtain, and Oblivion grapples with what it must feel like to be on the precipice of that unveiling. Would we want to know if we could? The wanderers make different choices so that the audience can ask what choice they might make. I’m not saying the afterlife is what we traditionally consider post-apocalyptic, but rather that our sense of self is so dependent on memory and lived experience that we sometimes lose sight of who we might be when those things are stripped away.
The film opens with a quotation: “Now we came to the empty shore. Upon those waters no one ever sailed who then experienced their return.” The screenplay and music drew their mythos from Dante’s Purgatory. How does this resonate with your background, having grown up in the Sonoran Desert on the border of Arizona and Mexico, and yourself a child of an immigrant mother from Germany and a World War II refugee?
Dante absolutely underpins the opera, and I think the general dialogue between the wanderers and the mythological characters has overtones of Dante’s various dialogues as he progresses through the circles of Purgatory. My early life was definitely shaped by tenuous circumstances. The Sonoran Desert is amazing but also unforgiving. The economies at the border are difficult despite many inspiring and beautiful communities taking care of each other. Though I loved being there, I’ve always had my mother’s wanderlust, no doubt ingrained from her own experiences as a refugee. So I grew up with a sense that everything is temporary and contingent. I think Oblivion is suffused with that same energy.
Laine Rettmer’s past opera productions have been praised as “wickedly smart” and “devastatingly funny” by The New York Times, and “not only profound but also shattering” by the UK’s Observer. How would you define her style personally?
Laine is a great director and visual artist. She and I had a strong working relationship prior to Oblivion, and I wanted her to direct the shoot. She was great with the musicians, and she understands how to get operatic singers to act. This is why I think the acting in Oblivion feels so natural, even though it’s underscored by a constant sense of surrealism from the score and melodic treatments. In the end, the result is very Lynchian, and I think our collaboration made that possible.
What are the two most inspirational operas of all time?
It’s too hard to pick two! Off the top of my head, I’d say Lulu and The Magic Flute. Tomorrow I might pick two different ones!
Tell us about the Etchings Festival in Auvillar that you founded in France, and any forthcoming projects you might want to share with us?
When I was coming up as an artist, there were few spaces where my kind of interests were being cultivated. So I started Etchings in France to create more dialogue between US and European musicians. It helped broaden my own scope of what was possible through collaboration. I’m thrilled to share the World Film Festival award with colleagues back in the US because of this drive. Upcoming projects include more orchestral work, another opera, and another film. It’s a great feeling to be working across so many media and to feel at home with the right collaborators. Who knows where the work will go?
What is your vision of post-Covid cinema?
I am exceptionally honored to accept the award for Best Musical Film at the 2025 World Film Festival in Cannes because I believe opera is a genre particularly suited to post-Covid film. As we move into politically uncertain and unstable times, arts organizations need to work together to share resources in order to deliver thought-provoking content to their audiences. There is an opportunity for opera to look to film as a way of reaching broader audiences without sacrificing the staging and direction that make live opera so exciting. Hybrid forms will define the next generation of art-making. I am honored that the World Film Festival in Cannes saw this potential in Oblivion, and I hope to share the work with many presenters in the future as an example of how we can reach and engage new audiences for both film and opera.
BIO
Biography – John Aylward
“We hear brilliant, energetic rhythmic figures… imaginative sonorities and harmonies that always move, always inflect. Also striking are the zones of suspended motion and otherworldly calm.”
— American Academy of Arts and Letters
John Aylward is a composer and multimedia artist living in Northampton, Massachusetts. He is Professor of Music at Clark University and Director of Ecce Arts, a non-profit performing arts ensemble and advocacy group.
The Boston Globe has described Aylward’s music as “delicate and deep, all at once,” and Gramophone has called his work “mysterious, iridescent, and daring.” The Canadian review Textura praised his monodrama Angelus as “gripping music of a high order,” while Opera Wire called his recent opera Oblivion “a brilliant piece of drama.”
Aylward’s recent awards and fellowships include those from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Koussevitzky Commission from the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, MacDowell, Tanglewood, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the International Society for Contemporary Music (First Prize), among many others.
His work is inspired by a range of literary and philosophical authors. His mother, a German immigrant and World War II refugee, shaped much of his understanding of war, displacement, migration, and authoritarianism. Much of Aylward’s music also reflects his youth in the Sonoran Desert on the Arizona-Mexico border, where intertwined cultures and vast, otherworldly landscapes continue to inform his artistic voice.
More about John’s music can be found at johnaylward.com.
©2025 Isabelle Rouault-Röhlich
