Dave

Composer David MacDonald writes music that is serious and clever, expressing a fondness for groovy rhythms and delightful surprises. He simultaneously embraces and pokes fun at expectations, like smashing the formality of concert traditions through the irreverent firehose of social media. Growing up as a trumpet player in St. Louis, Missouri, David attended the University of Missouri, first focusing on performance and only then discovering an interest in composition. He later earned a M.M. and D.M.A. in composition from Michigan State University. His primary composition teachers have been Ricardo Lorenz, W. Thomas McKenney, and Stefan Freund. David believes passionately that new music---even pretty weird music---is for everyone, not just the formally trained few, and he loves sharing new music experiences with a wider audience. In 2010, he co-founded SoundNotionTV, a podcast network featuring audio and video shows about music and the arts. He previously served as founder co-Artistic Director of SCENE&heard, a new music concert series at the (SCENE) Metrospace gallery in East Lansing, Michigan. Today, David lives in Wichita, Kansas, where he teaches composition, theory, and technology at Wichita State University. Recent projects include a recording with Navona Records and the game score for the Apple Arcade launch title Possessions. In 2007, David won the Michigan State University Honors Competition for Emulsion Quintet, and in 2006, he was a winner of the 54th Annual BMI Student Composer Awards for Elegy. He received an Honorable Mention in the 2005 MTNA Missouri Young Artist Composer Competition, and was a 2005 finalist in the Sinquefield Family Foundation Prize in Composition. David’s current projects include an interdisciplinary, group improvisation performance with dancers, artists, poets, and musicians. He also performs with Folio, an art rock band made up of other composer/performers in the Lansing, Michigan area.