David S. Carter is a music theorist, composer, and teacher who serves as an Assistant Professor of Music (Theory/Composition) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has published peer-reviewed articles examining popular music in Music Theory Online, Theory and Practice, and Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought. He has presented papers at the Society for Music Theory annual meeting, the National Conference of the College Music Society, and at both the U.S. and International conferences of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). His compositions have been performed or recorded by the JACK Quartet, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Ensemble Signal, and the Callithumpian Consort, among others. Composition prizes he has been awarded include first place in the 2012 Iron Composer competition at Baldwin Wallace University, Northwestern University’s William T. Faricy Award, and second prize in the Rhenen (Netherlands) International Carillon Composition Competition. He earned his doctorate in music composition at Northwestern, where he studied with Lee Hyla, Aaron Travers, and Jay Alan Yim, earned a J.D. at the University of Southern California, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature at Yale University.

CV (current as of August 26, 2025)
David S. Carter on SoundCloud