Overview
Graduate Coordinator, School of Music
Area Coordinator, Musicology & Composition
Composition
David MacDonald’s music has been performed at venues around the world, including Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall. He has been honored by the BMI Foundation, ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards, the Koch Cultural Trust, the Sinquefield Family Foundation, and Michigan State University Honors Competition. He has been commissioned by the Allen Philharmonic Orchestra, Kansas Music Teachers Association, Hastings College Symphonic Band, h2 Quartet, and others.
Dr. MacDonald’s writing on contemporary music notation practices, teaching, and music technology have appeared in Scoring Notes, where he is a senior contributor and cohosts the Scoring Notes podcast. He serves on the board of the KNOB Festival of New Music in Wichita, and has previously served on the board of directors of Null-state, a non-profit organization promoting research and education in computer music, and as the president of the Central Florida Composers Forum, Director of Digital Media for the Timucua Arts Foundation, and founder and co-Artistic Director of SCENE&heard, a new music concert series at the (SCENE) Metrospace gallery in East Lansing, Michigan.
Recent projects include an open folio of works for solo vibraphone, commissioned by KMTA, and a young-audiences work for narrator and orchestra, commissioned by the Allen Philharmonic. Recordings of Dr. MacDonald’s work can be heard on Blue Griffin and Navona Records.
He teaches composition, theory, and technology at Wichita State University. He is from St. Louis, Missouri and received a B.M. in composition and trumpet performance from the University of Missouri - Columbia and a M.M. and D.M.A. in composition from Michigan State University.
Bachelor of Music in comp. & trumpet performance - U. of Missouri, Columbia
Master of Music in composition - Michigan State University
Doctor of Musical Arts in composition - Michigan State University