The Vaughan Recital Series and the Department of Music present David Aguila and Alexandria Smith

David Aguila and Alexandria Smith will be presenting works for trumpet at Dartmouth College in Faulkner Recital Hall. Performing works by Aguila, Lim, and Terrazas. 

This recital is free and open to the public.

David Aguila is a Los Angeles based performer and composer from Florida. His work uses acoustic and electronic instruments, spatialization, and perception of sound, time, and memory which are conceptually abstracted to create sonic landscapes and performance installations. As a performer, Aguila has performed as a trumpeter with orchestras, chamber ensembles, wind bands, improvisation ensembles, and contemporary ensembles, traveling across the USA and Europe. Aguila also performs as a sound projectionist, processing instruments, voice, and performing contemporary music. Aguila was a co-founder and co-artistic director of aLma.MaddR, an interdisciplinary collective dedicated to the creation and presentation of interactive and immersive new works that hope to provide meaningful and transformative experiences for audience members.  In late 2017 Aguila decided to leave the collective to pursue personal musical and artistic projects his most recent work can be heard on Ted Taforo's album, You Are, and for the Los Angeles based band Snow Nerds. Aguila received his Bachelor’s degree (2009-13) in trumpet performance at the Eastman School of Music. He studied under James Thompson. While getting his MFA at CalArts (2013-15), Aguila studied trumpet with Ed Carroll and studied music composition with Vinny Golia and Sara Roberts with a focus on spatial and electroacoustic music and interdisciplinary performance installation.

Praised by the New York Times for her “appealingly melancholic sound” and “entertaining array of distortion effects,”Alexandria Smith is a trumpeter, improviser, and electronic musician/multi-media artist pursuing her DMA at the University of California San Diego.  The objective of her practice is to use a multidisciplinary approach to explore the parallels of the theoretical concepts behind interactive software and hardware, immersive environments, and music that form a cross-wiring of sensory perceptions and involuntary synthesis.  As a performer/composer, she is to researching more ways in which she can eliminate the roles of the “composer” and the “performer,” and adopt a democratic system of notation and musical ideas that can be changed in the moment and embody what the performer feels, experiences, and senses in space. Her recent work and collaborations are currently focusing on pushing the timbral limits of the trumpet, extended vocal techniques, and creating interactive performance environments. Her recent performanc engagements include performing in John Zorn's improv night, the New York Premiete of Matthias Pintscher's Occultation, performing as a soloist at the Martha Graham Dance Company 90th Anniversary Concert, and premiering Anothony Coleman's solo piece with the Either/Or Ensemble.