David A. Jones

credit: Alexis Gillmore Photography

David A. Jones (b. 1990) is a composer and horn player from Olympia, Washington. His rhythmic and motive-driven style is inspired in large part by the music of Stravinsky, Debussy, Hindemith, Holst, and many others. David’s works include music for orchestra, wind band, string quartet, brass quintet, percussion ensemble, choir, and a variety of other ensembles.

David is a recent recipient of the 2015 Barlow Student Composition Award at BYU, won second prize in the 2016 Vera Hinckley Mayhew Composition Contest, and was one of fifteen winners selected in Vox Novus’s “Fifteen Minutes of Fame: Nautilus Brass Quintet” call for scores in 2014. He has had works premiered by the BYU Chamber Orchestra, the Nautilus Brass Quintet, the BYU-Idaho Symphony Band, and the RixStix Percussion Ensemble. He is currently studying for his Master’s in composition at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he lives with his wife and child. David graduated with a Bachelor of Musical Arts in Composition at Brigham Young University – Idaho in July 2015, where he studied with Darrell Brown.

David writes:

Aspen was commissioned by the Brigham Young University Chamber Orchestra through the Barlow Student Composition Award, and was premiered on March 31, 2016, at the De Jong Concert Hall in Provo, Utah. Of Aspen, David says, “Aspen seeks to capture, in a sense, this unique quality of aspen trees. The piece doesn’t follow any specific program; rather, I began with a few simple ideas that seemed reminiscent of the nature of aspen trees, and allowed those ideas to spread and develop. Aspens typically grow not as individual trees, but in clone colonies. These colonies spread by sending out root suckers. Each of the trees in a colony is interconnected by a single, intricate root system; even the largest grove of aspens is made up not of many trees, but of one single, living organism.”

listen to an excerpt of David’s Aspen: