Drawn to a style of expressive abstraction, composer Jeffrey Martin writes music that is built on his study of music theory and computer-assisted composition. His output includes music for a diverse range of solo instruments including cello, piano, marimba, and ensembles such as string quartet, percussion quartet, piano trio, woodwind trio, and choral music. A variety of ensembles have premiered and read his music, including the Bergamot String Quartet, Strata Trio, Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Angora Ensemble, Third Practice, UMBC Percussion Ensemble, UMBC New Music Ensemble, and UMBC Symphony Orchestra. A premiere of a work for trombone and electronics is planned for Fall 2022.
As part of his research in music theory, he has developed an extensive software library in Python for analysis and composition using various aspects of atonal theory. The library, called mutil, has grown to include tools for the manipulation of sets and ordered segments in both the domains of pitch and pitch-class, as well as arrays, set-class complexes, various matrices (such as invariance matrices), and an atonal harmonic analyzer. mutil is complemented by a standalone program called SetManipulator that performs standard calculations without the need to write Python code using the software library. Recent feature additions include support for 24-tone microtonal set theory and a tool to generate a SuperCollider score from a MusicXML file. The analyzer in the mutil library provided support for Jeffrey's computational analysis of Elliott Carter's Fifth String Quartet, completed in Spring 2022. This culminated in a paper, Balanced Pitch Set Spacing in Elliott Carter's Fifth String Quartet, where he demonstrated that Carter's compositional technique resulted in global balance in chord spacing across the entire work. mutil is an important part of Jeffrey's compositional work, and new compositions often involve adding additional tools to the library.
Following his interests in music theory and musicology, Jeffrey served as a research intern with harpsichordist and theorist Dr. 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 the engraving of over two hundred excerpts from a variety of sources, as well as orchestral reduction and error correction in source materials. He is currently working as an engraver for an anthology to be published by SUNY Press in 2022.
Jeffrey is pursuing undergraduate degrees in music composition and computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he has studied with Dr. Linda Dusman, Dr. Bradley Green, and Dr. Daniel Pesca.