About Jesse Strickland
I’m a Composer, and Music Theorist, and Musicologist. Introducing myself as such at dinner parties will always get the same polite but confused “and what does that mean…?”
I’ve spent a simple majority of my life up to this point singing in choirs (starting as a Soprano II and slowly sliding my way down to a Bass I), and an overwhelming majority of my life in church. That particular Venn Diagram led to a bulk of my work being sacred choral music. I recommend this one for starters. I write a lot of church music that isn’t choral though. I’m an avid lover of hymnody for its metrical and rhyming aesthetic, but also for its theological density. It’s that theological density and admiration for traditional liturgy that is on full display in my latest album Evensong - an album which is structured after an Anglican Evensong Service.
My works are some combination of Bluegrass, Classical, Punk, Modern Worship, Jazz, and/or Sacred Choral - genres so similar you really have to squint to see the difference. Each piece or song has some varying degree of influence from each of these.
Once, I was chemistry major, but I dropped that when they made me sign a paper promising I wouldn’t do any “independent experiments” in the labs. Nevertheless, science (astronomy in particular) remains an interest of mine, and I have found chamber music to be a suitable arena to explore the intersection of science and music - like this piece based on the orbital resonance of a star system. I also enjoy the math of microtonal music, but I’d really rather stay rooted securely in tonal sonorities. I found this to be a false dichotomy, so my first string quartet does both.
I graduated from Auburn University (War Eagle), where I have since taught both Music and Aural Skills. I got my masters at the University of South Carolina.
In 2015, I started making music theory and music history videos as a free educational resource for teachers and students. My YouTube channel has all of those videos.
I have an awesome wife who is incredibly supportive, and together we have made it our goal to keep our tiny human alive. We enjoy traveling, cooking with whatever is in the fridge, and savoring a well-brewed cup of coffee.
At any given moment, I have somewhere in the ballpark of 30 projects going on. They get released as soon as my ADHD allows. Obviously more could be said, but that’s me in a nutshell*.
have a question? I’d love to hear from you
Frequently asked questions
What did you eat for lunch?
How bold of you to assume I remembered to eat lunch.
What is your least favorite Interstate?
Great question. I-20 in Atlanta…or any interstate in Atlanta because of traffic. Or, I-70 in Kansas because of boredom.
Paper, Rock, or Scissors?
They all have their pros and cons, but Paper. I find most people tend to just throw Rock by default - your hand is already in Rock formation. It’s not fool proof, but it’s almost guaranteed to work at least 33% of the time.
Is a hot dog a sandwich?
No, it’s a taco. And I will not be taking further questions on that.
Have you ever forgotten to transpose your horn parts before handing it to a player right before a rehearsal?
I’ll plead the 5th. I suppose in this case, a perfect 5th.
What is your favorite type of bridge?
At the risk of sounding cliche - I’ve lived in multiple cities with iconic 19th century suspension bridges with Gothic Revival style stone masonry towers - so probably that type.
*What an absurd idiom. An object contained within in a nutshell is hidden, as nutshells are notoriously opaque, leaving the possessor without access to what lies within. The indehiscent nature of most nuts means that the moment a nutshell-encased object is made visible, the structural integrity of the encasement has been severely (if not entirely) compromised, rendering the nutshell worthless, and the previously immured object free from its pomological incarceration. Furthermore, from personal experience, nutshells remain fiendishly difficult to reassemble. The resulting impasse means you can’t have both access to an object in a nutshell and the nutshell itself. The idiom itself means “a compression of information”, but this is also an analogous failure. The aforementioned features inherent to the nutshell (namely its strict rigidity and its unopenability) necessitate any object enclosed in the nutshell must grow simultaneously and proportionally to it - this precludes any and all objects larger than the nutshell, and/or beginning outside of the nutshell. But I suppose “That’s me in a Zip File” didn’t have the same ring to it.