about

Drawn to a style of expressive abstraction, composer Jeffrey Martin writes music that explores experimental techniques, drama, and unique sounds. His output includes music for a diverse range of instrumentations, including solo performers, various ensembles, orchestra, and computer music. A variety of ensembles have premiered and read his music, including the JACK Quartet, UMBC Symphony Orchestra, Bergamot String Quartet, Strata Trio, Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Angora Ensemble, Third Practice, UMBC Percussion Ensemble, and UMBC New Music Ensemble.

His research focuses on music analysis, computer-assisted composition, and audio synthesis and analysis. This has borne fruit in the form of several software projects, most notably a computational symbolic analyzer for studying harmony called VerticalAnalyzer, and two projects for working with atonal theory: pctheory, a Python library, and SetManipulator, a standalone program for performing standard calculations on pitch-class sets and ordered segments, including support for 24-EDO microtonal harmony. Other work includes tools for extracting information for SuperCollider from MusicXML files, as well as a recent project called aus for processing sound files and extracting samples.

Following his interests in music theory and musicology, Jeffrey served as a research intern with harpsichordist and theorist Paula Maust on the Expanding the Music Theory Canon website. This website is a collection of inclusive music theory excerpts from the music of women and underrepresented minorities for use in undergraduate music curriculum. His contribution included engraving excerpts from a variety of sources, as well as orchestral reduction and error correction. This work later resulted in a contract for a corresponding anthology published by SUNY Press in December 2023, for which he served as the primary engraver.

Jeffrey holds undergraduate degrees in music composition (B.A.) and computer science (B.Sc.) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he studied with Linda Dusman, Bradley Green, and Daniel Pesca. He is currently pursuing a M.A. in music composition at the University of Iowa, where he studies with Jean-François Charles.