David T. Little, Artistic Director
Composer/Performer David T. Little, (b. 1978, New Jersey), is actively committed to music of dramatic intensity and direct expression. A two-time BMI Student Composer Award Winner (2002 for hope in the proles and 2004 for Piano Trio) Little’s composition Screamer!was chosen by Maestro David Zinman as the winner of the 2004 Jacob Druckman Award for Orchestral Composition from the Aspen Music Festival, where Little was a Schumann Fellow during the summer of 2003. He is a 2003 recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and served as the 2001 ASCAP Leonard Bernstein Fellow in Composition at the Tanglewood Music Center. Most recently, Little was awarded the 2004 Harvey Gaul Prize from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, which resulted in the commissioning of his upcoming theatre piece "Soldier Songs."
A composer of great diversity, Little’s music has been concurrently praised as “smoothly euphonious…with tonal yet original harmonies” (American Record Guide), and “clanking, almost industrial” (The Stage). Alex Ross of The New Yorkerwas “completely gripped” by Little’s “ultra-dissonant” Sunday Morning Trepanation, proclaiming: “every bad-ass new-music ensemble in the city will want to play him.”
An active performer, improviser and collaborator, Little has performed extensively in the United States and Europe. His performance as a rock drummer has been praised as “on fire, both crazed and surgically accurate” (Steve Gisselbrecht - The Noise). He has collaborated with: artist Timothy Hutchings, writers Todd Craig and Jan Ramjerdi, and choreographers Anita Cheng, Nanine Linning, Jessica Fogel, Eliza Miller and Aimee McDonald, whose 2003 collaboration Come Here to Mewas praised as “precisely realized”, and “refreshing” by www.hour.ca (Montreal) and “beautiful” by The Stage (Edinburgh).
Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Percussion Performance, Little holds a Master of Music degree in Composition from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His primary teachers have included William Bolcom, Michael Daugherty, Osvaldo Golijov and Steve Mackey. He is currently a doctoral candidate in composition at Princeton University.
Little’s music has been heard at: The Saxonian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dresden; the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Fest; the 2004 Montreal Fringe Fest; La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; Strasbourg, France; Tanglewood; Aspen; Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; the Merce Cunningham Studio, NYC; Joyce SoHo, NYC; and at Susquehanna University, SUNY Albany, The Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Michigan, MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. Conductor Marin Alsop conducted the West Coast premiere of Little’s orchestral work Screamer! at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in 2004, where Little served as Composer-In-Residence. For more information, see www.DavidTLittle.com
Jun Jensen, Cello
Caleb Burhans, Violin
Eileen Mack, Clarinet
James Johnston, Piano
David T. Little, Artistic Director
Ian Fry, Drumset
Daisy Press, Soprano
Taylor Levine, Guitar
Yuri Yamashita, Percussion
