David Huang Mailman is a composer, researcher, and teacher working at the intersection of historiography and artistic expression. Dedicated to challenging conventional understandings of the past, their music depicts overlooked historical perspectives with a colorful, populist compositional language. He emphasizes approaching stories with humility, collaborators with humanity, and everything else in life with humor.
As a researcher, David’s analyzes the threads of political revisionism and cultural appropriation that run throughout mid- and late-twentieth century Chinese musical composition. His paper on the Yellow River Piano Concerto’s (re)orchestration won the 2024 Rey M. Longyear Prize from the American Musicological Society South-Central. Their research extends to introducing high-quality editions of Chinese classical music transcribed and arranged for Western performers.
David’s compositional accolades include awards from the National Association for Music Education; and finalist recognition for “The President’s Own” Marine Band Call for Score s, an ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and two American Prizes in Composition. They have been commissioned and performed by groups including C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective, the Choral Arts Initiative, the Eugene Difficult Music Ensemble, Latitude 49, the PSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble, and the FSU Wind Orchestra.
David earned his bachelor’s at Vanderbilt University studying with Drs. Stan Link and Michael Slayton. They are earning their master’s in music composition at UNCSA under Dr. Lawrence Dillon.