New Mexico State University music professor Jacob Dalager earned a silver medal at the Global Music Awards for Originality and Creativity for his album, “3ɟutures for Trumpet and Orchestra,” funded by a seed grant from NMSU’s Office of Research, Creativity and Economic Development. The seed grant program is designed to help faculty launch new projects in the arts and humanities for which they will seek external funding.
The Global Music Awards are open to any instrument or genre of music and have multiple categories. Dalager’s album, released last year, was his second to receive a silver award. He also released a duo album with Jason Carder, a trumpet professor from the University of Arizona. Their album,“Desert Dialogues,” was honored in the Contemporary Classical and Album Art categories.
“My original composition, called ‘3ɟutures for Trumpet and Orchestra,’ is a concerto about climate change. I recorded it with the Las Cruces Symphony and conductor Ming Luke, and I was able to hire a Grammy-nominated recording engineer. I couldn’t have even come close to doing that without the amazing seed grant.”
Dalager carries his vision and creativity into the classroom to engage and inspire his students: “I’m a trumpet professor, but I think of myself first as an artist and the form of art that I choose to pursue is music. I compose music and I also express music through the trumpet,” Dalager said. “As a professor, I hope to inspire my students with that, too. I want them to pursue creativity. They’re in rehearsal all the time. They spend a lot of time practicing the skills that I assign them and music that they need to learn. The point of all that is so they can perform works of art and create works of art, whether that’s composition or improvisation or some sort of collective project. My motivation for teaching is to inspire the next generation of creative musicians by being a productive and artistic person myself.”
To give his students the experience of what it takes to record a performance for an album, Dalager invited them to be there when he recorded “3ɟutures” with the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. The album resulted from recordings of two live concerts and some studio editing.
“My students were there, and they got to see all the microphones. Yhey got to see their professor perform under pressure, not even just of a live performance, but a live recorded performance to be commercially released,” Dalager said. “And I talked to them about it afterwards, going through the editing process and other aspects of producing the album.”
Dalager is in the process of recording a new album of his original music with solo trumpet and piano and as well as chamber music.
“I’m trying to put together an hour’s worth of entirely original music,” Dalager said. “So far, I recorded a piano reduction of that same piece, ‘3ɟutures’ and I recorded a chamber piece called ‘Celestial Fury for Trumpet, Voice, Percussion, and Cello.’ Up next to record is a four-movement work in the form of an analogy called ‘Suite Analgique,’ and a Las Cruces-inspired concerto called ‘Organ Mountain Fantasia.’”
Dalager will perform “Celestial Fury” at the International Trumpet Guild Conference in May with his voice colleague Sarah Daughtry, NMSU associate professor of music, and NMSU percussion alumnus Bert Barajaz.
Listen to both “Desert Dialogues” and “3ɟutures for Trumpet and Orchestra” at https://jacobdalager.com/albums.
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CUTLINE: New Mexico State University music professor Jacob Dalager earned two silver medals at the Global Music Awards. (Courtesy images) (Album art by Kristen Opalinski)