Composer Isaiah Chapman’s musical style analyzes the blend of hermeneutics and narratology, the objectives of literary elements, and the mixture of humor and irony as directed by social behaviors and constructs. Examples of such elements were heard in Isaiah’s première, A Series of Expected Jocosities, a new chamber work composed for Peabody’s contemporary music ensemble Now Hear This in December, 2021. Isaiah’s last premièred work, a commission in May, 2022, for the high school orchestra at H-B Woodlawn in Arlington, Virginia, débuted under the direction of Risa Browder. A partial performance of his Epic Suite for String Quartet, in November 2018, at the Eastman School of Music, also, employed some of the aforementioned elements, and will be available for listen on the composer’s developing website and YouTube channel.
Interest with phenomenology, hermeneutics, and narratology developed in the last year of Isaiah’s undergraduate studies, where he, advised by David Bard-Schwarz, completed a thesis entitled The Visibility of Narrative Structure: A Symbiotic Relation of Narrative to Story in the Three Suites for Solo Viola by Max Reger. Isaiah was, also, a recipient of the 2020 Hugh Hawkins Fellowship from the Johns Hopkins University to focus on the music of Ronald Roxbury, a Peabody composer alumnus.
Along with composing and research, Isaiah is a violist whose playing ranges from baroque to contemporary. Playing in the University of North Texas’s Collegium Musicum ensemble, directed by Paul Leenhouts and Richard Sparks, in his undergraduate studies for four years, Eastman’s baroque and new music ensembles—Collegium Musicum with Paul O’Dette and Christel Thielemann and Musica Nova with Brad Lubman—, and Baltimore Baroque Band led by Peabody historical performance professors, Risa Browder and John Moran. With both Collegium Musicum ensembles, Isaiah participated thrice in the Boston Early Music Festival, in June 2015, 2017, and 2019.
Outside of school, Isaiah has played in both baroque and modern ensembles with the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra, Monroe Symphony Orchestra, Austin Baroque Orchestra, Washington Bach Consort, and Opera Lafayette, and has performed a solo set with the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival. Having been invited to participate in the inaugural and the upcoming Smithsonian Haydn Academy, a historical performance workshop intensely focusing on the string quartets of Joseph Haydn, Isaiah has played in quartets led by Adriane Post, Catherine Manson, and Kenneth Slowik. Isaiah was, also, a Berwick Academy fellow in 2022, playing in an orchestra led by Monica Huggett and Adam LaMotte.
Isaiah is equally committed to education as he is with performance and composition. With three years of teaching experience in the University of North Texas’s installation of String Project, Isaiah was chosen, amongst a select group of music education students, in October 2014, to visit and teach at a music and language workshop at the Orff-Institut in Salzburg, Austria. Along with education, Isaiah’s interest in GLAMs—galleries, libraries, archives, and museums—has undergirded his activism for the corrective action and presentation of African diaspora collections.
Isaiah has studied with Susan Dubois, Daphne Gerling, and Masumi Per Rostad on viola; Risa Browder and Cynthia Roberts on baroque viola; and, composition with Oscar Bettison and Diana Rosenblum. He holds three Master of Music degrees, one in Viola Performance & Literature from the Eastman School of Music, two in Composition and Historical Performance—Baroque Viola from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and three Bachelor of Music degrees in Viola Performance, Music Theory, and Music Education from the University of North Texas, cum laude. This summer, Isaiah will be relocating to the Greater Boston area, where he is working on completing a Master’s in Library and Information Science, with an Archives Management concentration, at Simmons University.