David Voss '16
When I first applied to Lawrence University for composition, I had no idea just how much I would grow in my four years of school. Having never formally studied composition prior to college, I didn’t know what to expect. However, shortly after I started taking lessons, I was greatly impressed by the composition faculty’s attentiveness to their students’ needs, their respect toward each composers’ individual musical voice, and their insightful compositional remarks regarding their students’ works. Even since I’ve graduated, I’ve received great support from the Lawrence composition faculty, particularly with grad school applications and the commissioning process.
I am very grateful for the education I received at Lawrence and for the various musical opportunities I received during my four years. The faculty and my fellow Lawrentians have shaped me more then they can ever know.
Life after Lawrence: David Voss was the recipient of a Lawrence Composition Scholarship as well as a Piano Accompanying Fellowship. David won the 2014-15 Pi Kappa Lambda Award in Composition at Lawrence, and he was chosen as one of a select group of composers for the 2015-16 Lawrence Symphony Orchestra Composers’ Forum. He has received a number of commissions, writing an Easter cantata for St. Mark Lutheran Church as well as a mass double reed ensemble piece for the International Double Reed Society 2017 convention. He was a composition student at the 2016 Atlantic Music Festival, where he studied with composition professors from some of the top music schools in the country and had his Pierrot ensemble piece Tweak premiered by the AMF Contemporary Ensemble. Before that, he was a Composition Fellow at the 2014 nief-norf Summer Festival, where his quintet Porch Swing was given its world premiere. In addition to his composition studies, David studied piano at Lawrence and performed as the pianist for the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir. Listen to David's music on his composition website.