David Jones

Recently named 2026 Composer of the Year by the Oregon Music Teachers Association, Dr. David A. Jones (b. 1990) is a contemporary classical composer, French hornist, and singer originally from Lacey, Washington, and currently based in Salem, Oregon. Through his quietly energetic music, Jones seeks to shine a spotlight on the hidden details and unknown stories of the world around us. Jones is a champion of music that is intricate, complex, and clever while still being comprehensible and relatable, a blend of the comfortably expected and the delightfully unexpected. His music has been commissioned and performed by the Georgia Southern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble, the Braeburn Brass, the Statesboro Chamber Orchestra, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Bradley University Symphonic Winds, the Salem Symphonic Winds, the Prismatic Winds at BYU-Idaho, the Moody Center for the Arts, the Boniuk Institute for Religious Tolerance, Ensemble Hexnut, the Xelana Duo, the BYU Chamber Orchestra, and numerous other ensembles. He was a Music Now Composition Competition winner at the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival in 2023, a Susan and Ford Schumann Composition Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2021, and a participant in the American Composers Orchestra’s Earshot program in 2016 with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.

As a hornist, Jones has performed with the Oregon Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Idaho Falls Symphony, and the Oregon Festival Chorale. He won the BYU-Idaho Concerto Competition in 2015 and performed James Beckel’s The Glass Bead Game with the BYU-Idaho Symphony Orchestra. Jones is currently working on a new album of music for horn and piano titled “Golden Scenescapes,” to be released in the Fall of 2025. An alumnus of Rice University, Brigham Young University, and Brigham Young University-Idaho, Jones currently teaches music at Linn-Benton Community College and has taught at Linfield University and Pacific University. Jones serves as Vice-President of Cascadia Composers and as an Advisor to the Barlow Endowment.es here