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from the press
 Soldier Songs (2004-2006)
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“Composer David Little is not yet 30 and is still working on his Ph.D., yet his list of classical works is as long as your arm. If his latest, "Soldier Songs," premiered on Friday by Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble at City Theatre on the South Side, is any indication, quality equals quantity in a big way. … Little's compositional language is eclectic and diverse, encompassing 19th-century Romanticism and polytonality, percussive counterpoint and musical theatre lyricism, semi-tone tuning and diatonic harmonies. … "Soldier Songs" is not a loosely connected cycle, but a dramatic, theatrical solo cantata that builds to a heartrending climax… With each of the 11 songs as gripping as the last…(it is) a glowing paean to peace activism.”
- Eric Haines, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, July 31, 2006
Composer David T. Little avoids many of the problems associated with political art in his one-hour "Soldier Songs" ... Little focuses on the experience of war ... not any particular conflict or the domestic political divisiveness of some wars. (The) selection and creation of his texts provides a variety of expressions -- poignant, ironic and direct. …masterful.
- Mark Kanny, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
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Valuable Natural Resources (2004)
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The high point of the concert was the premiere of the work "Valuable Natural Resources" of US American David
T. Little (born 1978), (composed for) the symposium...(it)...illuminated and indispensable level of the topic
(of Nature and Music): the exploitation of nature by humans, in addition, the exploitation of humans as a part
of nature.
C. Hoppe, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten
September 30, 2004
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SCREAMER! - a three-ring blur for orchestra (2002)
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David Little's 2002 "Screamer, a Three-ring Blur for Orchestra" is a hilarious homage to the circus.
This 26-year old composer captured - and augmented - the high spirits, drama and chaos of big-top happenings
in his high-speed, multilayered, orchestral frolic.
Little's musical high jinks with pie-tin trumpet mutes and Whoopee Cushions, were matched by the orchestra's cello section in their yearly prank -
this time wearing Day-Glo clown wigs, red bulb noses and balloons tied to cello scrolls.
Little's work was repeated at Sunday's Free Family Concert, an idea suggested by an audience member during Saturday's after-concert "talk-back."
- Phyllis Rosenblum, Santa Cruz Sentinel
That entire evening was a winner, opening with David Little's hilarious Screamer!--a three-ring blur for orchestra, a five-minute laugh riot,
complete with whoopee cushions, aluminum pie-plate trumpet mutes and cellists in clown attire.
- Scott MacClelland, Santa Cruz Metro
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Sunday Morning Trepanation (2002)
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"I was completely gripped by David T. Little's "Sunday Morning Trepanation," for mixed quartet and CD playback, which equates contemporary religion with the drilling of holes in the skull. This ultra-dissonant composer, who doubles as a heavy-metal drummer, is coming to Princeton in the fall, and every bad-ass new-music ensemble in the city will want to play him."
Alex Ross, The New Yorker
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Come Here To Me (2003)
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"The beautiful trio move to sometimes urgent, sometimes languid music...[which] becomes a clanking, almost industrial array of chains and noise,
with a distant flute in the background."
- Ben Dowell, The Stage, Edinburgh
"Come Here to Me is...a precisely realized trio of choreographies from Michigan's Terpsichore's Kitchen Dance Theatre that quietly presents itself with a professional intensity and lack of self-consciousness that's refreshing."
- Jodi Essery www.hour.ca
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how we got here (2003)
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"how we got here is an exquisite and slightly terrifying work which perambulates through a number of chimerical episodes, each comprised of sharp percussive dashes evolving and devolving across an acrid harmonic terrain. "
- Alex Rose, Hotel St. George Press, Winter 2007
"An equally good match between music and dance came in (Aimee) McDonald's "How We Got Here," in which McDonald, Sebaly and Jennifer Seguin seemed a pretty trio of primates, loping along the evolutionary trail to the percolating, primordial beat set for them by Ann Arbor composer David Little. "
- Susan Nisbett, Ann Arbor News On-line
Friday, July 11, 2003
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omega from recent distant portraits (2000)
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Here are one listener's picks for the mainstream: they seem to say, in today's computer-speak, "Show me more like this": ... "omega...was a smoothly euphonious movement from composition fellow David T. Little's 2000 recent distant portraits for string quartet. With a degree in percussion, Little still succeeded in finding idiomatic string style with tonal yet original harmonies."
- Leslie Kandell, American Record Guide
Nov-Dec, 2001
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