David Quang-Minh Nguyen ’13 Award-winning composer

David Nguyen's composition "Weight Stranding" won second place in 2020 in the ASCAP/SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) student competition in early 2020. He was also awarded the Second Prize at the 13th International Competition of Electroacoustic composition sponsored by The Foundation Destellos in Argentina in Summer 2020.

Nguyen, who starts his compositions by recording and then immersing himself in a variety of sounds, said the 13-minute work took 10 months to complete. "I had to change the ending five different times," he said. "I was never satisfied with it."

Nguyen, 30, has a Bachelor of Music from ODU's F. Ludwig Diehn School of Music, where he studied with Andrey R. Kasparov and Mark Chambers. He has received his master's degree and is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, planning to graduate in 2021. After that, he hopes to "take over or start an electronic music program at a university."

Along with the concert music that he composes, he also enjoys doing sound design for film. His current interests lie in composing acousmatic works dealing with multi-channel loudspeaker

expansion, sound spatialization, and immersive audio.

Both awards are very prestigious, and the entire School of Music is proud to have Nguyen as a member of its alumni ranks. "This is the first time in the history of ODU that a Music Composition graduate wins one of the top prizes at a major national competition, and that says it all," Kasparov said.

Listen to "Weight Stranding" at https://soundcloud.com/dqncomposer/weight-stranding

The College thanks Monarch Magazine editor Phil Walzer for contributing to this profile.