This piece is one in a series of works for trumpet ensemble conceived and composed in the last year or so. With less in-person musical collaboration going on, I decided to write some works for me, myself, and I. The results vary widely but all center on the same question:

What can you do with multiple trumpets that you can't do with one?

Some answers are obvious: play chords, for example. This piece employs chords at points but is more concerned with another, perhaps less obvious answer (at least for non-trumpeters): complex lines with large leaps and little time to breathe. Some instruments can do this with relative ease—trumpet is certainly not one of them.

Where one trumpet simply cannot perform this material, four trumpets in a hocketing pattern can do the job—hence the title "Hyper-Hocket." While this was the initial idea for the piece, I'd like to think that the music took on a life of its own at some point and became more than an experiment in trumpet texture. Listen for yourself to find out.

Enjoy!

Trumpets 1-4: Me

Mixing/Mastering: Rain Johannes (IG: @rainjohannes)

Hyper-Hocket — for trumpet quartet (2021)

Greetings—I'm a Philadelphia-based composer and music educator. My wide-ranging work draws from many different traditions—including jazz, M-Base, Afro-Latin, electronica, metal, hip-hop, early music, and new music—and integrates linear and cyclic concepts to weave hypnotic musical narratives.

My music has been performed, workshopped, and recorded by loadbang, Daedalus Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble, counter)induction, confluss, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, Sae Hashimoto, Matt Sharrock, Ellery Trafford, and more. It has been premiered at such venues as the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Symphony Space, OPERA America, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Staller Center for the Arts, and the Italian Academy at Columbia University.

My work has been featured by Score Follower and has been selected for a wide variety of new music festivals and concert series both domestic and international, including the Yarn/Wire International Institute (New York), Longy’s Divergent Studio (Massachusetts), CLICK FEST (Ohio), Ears to the Earth (Kansas), the School for Improvisational Music Summer Intensive (New York), and the Young Composers Meeting (Netherlands).

I'm currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Music Composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where I study composition with Natacha Diels. I hold an M.A. in Music Composition from Stony Brook University (2023), where I studied composition with Matthew Barnson, Perry Goldstein, and Daniel Weymouth and taught several semesters of undergraduate music theory. I received the Ackerman Prize for Excellence in Graduate Studies in recognition for my work at SBU. Prior to this, I received a B.A. in Music from Columbia University (2019), where I studied composition with George Lewis, Georg Haas, Zosha Di Castri, and Andy Milne; trumpet with Andy Kozar, Adam O’Farrill, and Amir ElSaffar; and music theory with Joseph Dubiel.

Hyper-Hocket — for trumpet quartet (2021)

david_acevedo_music