Dallas J. Herndon
Composer | Educator | Interdisciplinary Artist
Additional recordings can be found in my social media links (above)
“To me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how to see- see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.”- Terry Tempest Williams
AboutDallas J. Herndon
Dallas J. Herndon (b. 1994) is a composer, researcher, educator, and interdisciplinary collaborative artist. He holds a B.M in clarinet performance and music theory (with a minor in jazz studies) from Newberry College (Newberry, S.C.), a M.M. in music theory and composition from East Carolina University (Greenville, N.C.), and a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Utah. As an educator, Dallas has taught a variety of courses in the areas of music composition, music theory, musicianship, music history, and music technology. His primary composition teachers include Edward Jacobs, Travis Alford, Steve Roens, Elisabet Curbelo, Manuela Meier, and Miguel Chuaqui.Interdisciplinary, collaborative experiences remain at the heart of Dallas's work. As a passionate advocate for incorporating environmentalism within the arts, his creative interests integrate concepts of relativism, perspectivism, and environmentalism in music, and experiment with how changes in our perceptive experience might affect our understanding of meaning and identity. His ideas are often inspired by issues and phenomena found in our natural environment, and seek to challenge and bring awareness to how we understand and perceive our environment as human beings. His doctoral research centers in the field of environmental music and ecoacoustics. Part I, "An Analysis of Ecoacoustics in Matthew Burtner's Avian Telemetry" studies the use of ecoacoustics in Avian Telemetry by Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner. Part II, Valley: Three Corners of Our Room; An Interdisciplinary Work for Chamber Choir, Solo Instruments, and Electronics (2022) is a three-movement work that includes collaborations with a poet, videographer, and incorporates field recordings and the sonification of environmental data. Each movement seeks to tell a climate change story of three major environmental concerns native to the greater Salt Lake Valley area (light pollution, noise pollution, and the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake). The project was fully funded by the University of Utah's Global Change and Sustainability Center Research Grant, and the Third Movement ("Dissipate, Shattering Reflections") was selected as the Sound Winner of the 2023 Alfred Lambourne Arts Prize (Friends of the Great Salt Lake - Alfred Lambourne Arts Program).Dallas's article on the dangers of noise pollution was published in the Fall 2021 edition of the Wasatch Magazine. Other recent works include Asphyxiated By An Echo (2021) for string quartet and electronics, which was written in collaboration with visual artist Reilly Jensen and poet Matty Lane Glasgow for the University of Utah’s Artivism4Earth event on Earth Day, 2021. His recent work Arbor, Ardor, Ardus (Splice Ensemble, 2023) incorporates biodata and geoacoustic recordings of trees and underground soil, and is inspired by ecological traumas caused by extreme heat, drought, and deforestation. Using a collection of hydrophonic vocalization recordings of humpback whales, orcas, and walruses, his newest work, Exhumations of the Blue, reflects upon the ramifications of climate change in aquatic life and our planet's oceans. It will be premiered by the University of Utah "Runnin' Flutes" Flute Ensemble in April, 2024.Dallas is affiliated with Society of Composers, Inc, ASCAP, the College Music Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Ecoartspace. Outside of music, he enjoys hiking, being an amateur drone flyer, and studying philosophy, environmental issues, and foreign languages/cultures.C.V./resume and a full catalog of works are available upon request.