New Faculty: Composer David Sanford Works Across Many Genres

Professor of note Composer David Sanford, new assistant professor of music, says his work has been inspired by big band, jazz, rhythm and blues, funk, and other predisco popular music styles.

Sanford, who grew up in Pittsburgh and Colorado, credits a variety of influences with igniting his musicianship. "My brother is a band and choir teacher and a singer in Colorado, my great-grandmother was a composer, and my parents have been choir leaders," he notes, attesting to the musicality of his extended family. "I started on trombone when I was about ten and liked big band music early. I wanted to be a jazz musician. Charles Mingus inspired me to be a composer later on." Sanford was also influenced by rhythm and blues, funk groups like Parliament, and other pre-disco popular music styles. After completing undergraduate music studies at the University of Northern Colorado, he earned master's degrees in music theory and composition from the New England Conservatory of Music.

As a performer and active musician, Sanford has sung with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, conducted at the Monadnock Music Festival, and won many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and ASCAP Grant to Young Composers. During graduate school he was able to take a year off to focus exclusively on composing. "For me, composing is a struggle," he says. "I live with the pieces I'm most satisfied with for at least six months." He worked behind the scenes in the financial services industry to support himself during his years at Princeton, and has taught at the University of Chicago and Princeton.

Now in his third month at the College, teaching Twentieth-Century Music and the History of Jazz, Sanford says he "likes the performance-oriented department, as compared to the type of department where the performers are only adjuncts. Mount Holyoke seems like a great place so far."

Sanford is getting his feet on the ground, preparing his spring courses in Advanced Theory, and Advanced Composition, and his team-teaching share of Music 100. "I'm working on an orchestral piece, and hope sometime in the next few years I can organize a professional big band. I'm also looking forward to checking out student recitals on campus," he says.