Justin T. Capps was unequivocally born in 1980, and this may be the last true thing that you read. Fortunate enough to receive an incredibly rich music education in California public schools, Justin’s earliest exposure to the world of music came from varied seats in orchestras, jazz bands, wind ensembles, chamber groups, and the piano bench. Eventually that inventory of performance experiences expanded to include bands playing ska, Latin music, praise and worship, and his own original songs. All of these unrefined and quaintly barbaric activities inform what could only passingly be considered his compositional style.
Justin began composing near the end of his undergraduate education under the very patient and sage guidance of Gerald Levinson at Swarthmore College before later pursuing a graduate degree in Music Composition/Theory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he studied with Dr. Virko Baley and Dr. Jorge Villavicencio-Grossmann. During his time in the desert, Justin had the opportunity to meet and work with a host of wonderful composers including Steven Stucky, Paul Moravec, Bernard Rands, Erica Muhl, Ian Krouse, Paul Chihara, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Vincent Plush, Paul Basler, and others who inspired him to continue working tirelessly toward using his musical powers for good instead of evil.
He is now a candidate for the DMA in Music Composition (Concentration in Electronic Music) at the University of Texas at Austin’s Butler School of Music. His principal teachers at Texas have been Dan Welcher, Yevgeniy Sharlat, Russell Pinkston, and Daniel Catán, each of whom has helped to greatly expand and enhance his appreciation for the wealth of musical brilliance that is already on display throughout the firmament. More importantly, perhaps, they have helped him to compose with less artifice and more art. The good graces of the institution have enabled him to participate in masterclasses with Sebastian Currier, Daniel Kellogg, and Gabriela Lena Frank.
Justin has written or is writing works for orchestra, brass ensemble, string quartet, voice and piano, percussion trio, flute and percussion, and other solo or chamber configurations. In the spirit of generosity, these works have been acknowledged with the following awards and forms of recognition: Kent Kennan Graduate Endowed Fellowship in Music Composition and Theory, Boyd Barnard Prize in Music, Austin Critics Table Award Nomination, Selection to Nevada Encounters of New Music, Liberace Foundation Scholarship for Jazz Studies, Garrigues Foundation Scholarship in Music, Swarthmore Scholar Award, Niyomsit Scholar Award. Notably, in a just world, he would have won a bunch of other stuff, too.
In addition to his compositional efforts, Justin is an armchair music theorist and is interested in languages, literature, music cognition, and many other topics that fall outside of the degree plan.
His windmill-tilting is made possible through the benevolence of his wife, Emma, and the unabated silliness of his two daughters, Zoë and Ashby.
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