Composer Kevin Day has been dizzyingly busy the past three years, earning his doctorate at the Frost School of Music, teaching at two universities, and composing for ensembles across the United States and beyond. So busy, in fact, that the newly minted Dr. Day, who successfully defended his dissertation in early October, hasn’t quite absorbed the fact that, in many ways, he’s living the musical life of his dreams.
“It’s been working out in a way that I could never have foreseen,” Day said at the Weeks Music Library recently. He was in town for the Nov. 16 premiere of a work he created for Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, the innovative, genre-bending orchestra. “I’ve had a lot of things happen very fast.”
The most significant of those things is the Cincinnati Opera commissioning Day, 28, to create the first work in their Black Opera Series, which premieres in 2026. He’s working on concerto commissions for the Fort Worth Symphony, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the United States Navy Band. Contracts for two more concertos are in the works. All this is on top of over 250 works Day has composed for soloists, wind bands, chamber groups, and symphony orchestras. After teaching composition at Canada’s Wilfred Laurier University (commuting to Miami for classes once a week), he’s now a lecturer in music theory and musicianship at the University of California at San Diego, where he lives.
A multi-talented musician who played jazz piano, tuba and euphonium in band, and sang in church choirs (an experience that has been crucial for the opera) during high school, Day initially wanted to be a performer. He was bitten by the creation bug after composing his first piece for his high school band in Arlington, Texas. He became passionate about composing as an undergraduate at Texas Christian University. But the support and inspiration he found at the Frost School was crucial for his development and blossoming career.
Day always professes his gratitude to his primary Frost School mentor, Associate Professor of Composition Dorothy Hindman. But Robert Carnochan, the beloved professor, wind band leader, and instrumental performance chair who passed unexpectedly in September, was also key to Day’s experience here. They connected in part through their mutual love of wind bands. “Wind band was where I began,” Day said. “It always felt like home to me. I think Rob also found a sense of home, community, and belonging in the wind band. I think he and I connected in that way.”
Carnochan, who was devoted to fostering new work, said Day was a composer with whom he was particularly proud to work. Carnochan made the Frost School part of a consortium that commissioned Day’s “Concerto for Wind Ensemble,” one of his most popular pieces, and commissioned “Symphony Basquiat” to open the Knight Center for Music Innovation.
“Rob just loved working with composers,” said Day, who returned to campus the day before his Oct. 7 dissertation defense to attend Carnochan’s memorial concert, along with many other composers, conductors, and former students touched by the beloved band leader. “He loved that collaborative experience. Rob was one of the most inspiring conductors I’ve ever worked with. He was able to look at my scores and see things I didn’t see, and he was able to articulate that in such a profound way. That’s a tough thing to find.”
Day may have started with wind bands, but he is exulting in the range of musical opportunities he has now – an openness and versatility fostered at the Frost School. Nu Deco, which has done two other pieces Day composed here, was performing a new version of his “Concerto for Wind Ensemble.” At Weeks, Day buzzed over the previous night’s rehearsal with headliner Ledisi, the R&B singer who’s the latest of Nu Deco’s many Latin, R&B, hip-hop, and popular music collaborators.
“She was just blown away,” Day said. “She was raving, ‘Oh my god, I’ve never heard my music sound like this.’ There’s really no other group like [Nu Deco]. It’s an orchestra that can play [popular] music so authentically and precisely, that can pull off rhythms that are so complex. This group just does it and makes it look easy.”
The Cincinnati Opera commission is likely to open many more doors for Day. The Black Opera Project, a series of three new works, is a significant one that promises to draw national attention. Day’s opera, “Lalovavi,” is an ambitious, collaborative Afro-futurist epic. (It was also his dissertation project.) In an interview last spring, Day, who’s never composed an opera, seemed dazzled by the chance he’d been given. “I’m still in shock,” he said. “It’s insane."
Now that opportunity seems to be prompting new ambitions – not just to create big pieces for opera troupes and orchestras but to try new creative fields of all kinds. It’s exactly the kind of wide-ranging aspiration the Frost School aims to inspire.
“I’ve loved writing for voices so much I can see this being more part of my work,” Day said. “I feel like there’s a lot I’ve wanted to say as a composer that I haven’t been able to say in my instrumental music. I don’t know if I’ll become an opera composer. But I think it opens the door to lots of really cool collaborations.”
He’d like to work with dance companies. He wants to travel – other than Canada, he’s never been abroad. “I don’t know where life will take me next,” Day said. “But no matter what happens, I’m open to opera and ballet and working with visual artists and filmmakers. Getting outside of my shell more and working with these interdisciplinary mediums.”
“I’m at the point where I want to branch out as much as I can.”
