Full Bio
Clayton Trumbull (b.2002) is a queer, American composer, violist, and optimist from Saratoga Springs, NY.
His music is cathartic, often incorporating his original poetry, indeterminacy and personal agency, illuminating the interpersonal connection that connection through music fosters. Exploring nature, heartbreak, self-discipline, materialism, queer lifestyle, and other deeply intimate and personal themes through music and poetry with genuine expression is ever present in his bittersweet, nostalgic sound. He believes that seeking to create a better, more just world for everyone can be done through the community-building power of art, and composition is his vehicle.
He is currently completing his Master’s in Music Composition as a teaching assistant at the Pennsylvania State University, studying with Dr. Baljinder Sekhon II, Dr. Sarah Genevieve Burghart Rice, and Paul Coleman. In May 2025 he received his Professional Performance Certificate in Composition from Penn State, during this time also studying viola with Timothy Deighton. He received his B.M. in Music Composition from the Eastman School of Music in 2024, where he was also awarded the Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize in composition. He has studied with Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Matthew Barber, Robert Morris, and George Taylor, and participated in a2ru at Michigan State (2026), Cubelab (2025), New Music Mosaic’s Timbre (2025), the Atlantic Music Festival (2022), ArtSongLab (2022), and Mostly Modern Festival (2023). He has collaborated with many diverse artists, including Hypercube, Duo Cortona, Atlantic Brass Quintet, Isidore String Quartet, BlackBox Ensemble, Eastman Wind Orchestra, Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, saxophonist Andrew Hosler, composer/improvisor Solomon Kim, and poets Laura Fukumoto and Joshua Gentry.
As a violist, Clayton has played with chamber ensembles and orchestras, including Open Music (PA), Penn State’s Other Arts Ensemble, Penn State Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Penn State Philharmonic Orchestra, and Penn State Graduate Viola Quartet, the Eastman Philharmonia (assistant principal), and Musica Nova at Eastman conducted by Brad Lubman. His interests in new music have led him to perform at the Penn State New Music Festival, at student composers’ concerts at PSU and Eastman, with the Eastman Composer’s Sinfonietta, with the quartet Frog Magic Show (electroacoustic folk/contemporary classical), in addition to frequently performing his original compositions.
