Featured Composer: Thomas Little

With a premiere by the Winston Salem Symphony, commissions from Wachovia Winds and the American Guild of Organists and a recording session with Eighth Blackbird, Thomas Little has already experienced professional success while still an undergraduate student. His music has won competitions sponsored by the UNCSA Cantata Singers, the Winston Salem Symphony and violinist Jubal Fulks. This past summer, he participated in the Atlantic Music Festival, working with composers Richard Danielpour, Pierre Jalbert, Mari Kimura, Amy Beth Kirsten, David Ludwig, George Tsontakis and Nils Vigeland.

Thomas began piano lessons at the age of six. "I was always more interested in using the piano as a tool of expression than committing myself to learning the classical repertoire," he says. "I didn't start publicly performing on a regular basis until I was a teenager, and much of what I ended up learning came from the twentieth century, which remains a source of inspiration.

In the summer of 2012, he began composition studies with Dr. Michael Rothkopf, which led to majoring in Composition at the UNC School of the Arts. His first works at UNCSA included a theatrical collaboration with the duo Low and Lower and an electronic composition for the Tanglewood Festival of Lights. He has since collaborated with many choreographers and filmmakers, created a body of compositions inspired by the writings of Robert Service, composed music for a variety of ensembles, all while remaining active as a pianist and organist, as well as performing on gangsa, reyong and ceng-ceng with a local gamelan ensemble.

Thomas thinks deeply about every nuance of his music, and yet he composes at lightning speed. "While I've never pursued a singular compositional voice or stylistic trait, I'm fascinated with creating pieces that are expressive while still adhering to an underlying formal rigor. This allows for a lot of room for experimentation without stylistic limitation, and the freedom to make each piece unique. If I feel like I've written something that is interesting in equal measure for anyone who performs, listens to or analyzes it, then that's a job well done."

To see a sample of Thomas’s music, click on the image below: