Ayjay Nils

Despite being the offspring of an architect and a chemical engineer, Ayjay Nils and his four siblings starting playing musical instruments at a very early age. Ayjay had a viola put in his hand and he’s been playing it ever since. In 2007, while enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, he began writing hip-hop beats that sampled classical music, while also composing classical music itself.

In 2011, in an attempt to fuse both styles of his creative output, Ayjay co-founded the music collective FUCK IT, We’ll Do it Live! — a downright bacchanalian musical event of novelty and debauchery. In collaboration with his chums Joshua Seals and fellow beat maker/composer Bad Belzig, FUCK IT, We’ll do it live! (or FUCK IT for short) became an underground sensation, performing out of apartments in Harlem and featuring carnival-like gags, DADA influenced performance art, and an eclectic playlist of 3rd stream-esque tunes that combined the so-called genres of "classical", "jazz", and "hip-hop”. During this period, Ayjay moved to California to join the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, but continued to travel back and forth to NYC for FUCK IT.

In 2015, Ayjay joined the Berliner Philharmoniker (where he is still a fixed member). In his first five years in Berlin, Ayjay put his creative activities on pause to make way for his new job and family. But eventually his impulse to make music began to remanifest itself. Ayjay hoarded synthesizers and drum machines, sampled his children’s annoying electronic toys, and resumed composing at the piano to realize this evolution of style. His influences are too much of a hot mess to glean from merely listening, but they range from eastern European and Middle-Eastern folk music; MF DOOM; Henry Miller; Louie Barletta; the biographies of the great composers; the Sopranos; and crucially —the 1990s Chicago Bulls.

Ayjay will be releasing an album "Okay, wait wait wait" in September 2023.