Editor's note :: This story is the third part in a three-part series on undergraduate research.

by Sheilah Britton

Undergraduate students in the arts are no less likely to pursue research early in their academic studies than their counterparts in engineering, business, or the humanities.

Tom Peterson is a young composer. He graduated in 2008 from the School of Music in the Herberger College of the Arts at Arizona State University. For Peterson, it has been about making the most of the opportunities available on the ASU campus.

“If you’re planning on graduate school, it’s something you have to do,” he says. “The best schools are competitive and you have to have evidence of your abilities, your music.”

Peterson, whose father is an organist and choir director, was introduced to music at an early age. He played in band in elementary school, learned piano, violin and trumpet—and sang in his father’s choir.

“Since then,” he says, “being a vocalist has really become an important part of what I do, who I am. I conduct a church choir now.”

But a composer? How does one make the leap?

“You have something you want to write about. You ask yourself how you can turn that into something you can communicate with other people,” he replies casually. His favorite works to write and to listen to are socially involved—not specifically political, but music that conveys ideas.

In 2006, Peterson composed a piece with the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad at its center. Peterson describes the music as written in the style of Charles Mingus: “It’s rhythmic and brooding. Improvisation and jazz forms combine to almost tell a story. It opens with a bass solo—and this is before America had seen the photographs.”

The music changes as the story evolves, becoming loud, discordant. Peterson even asked the band members to “play what makes you angry.” By the end of the piece, a protagonist tenor sax plays a solo.

“The emotion comes at the end,” he says. “The first six minutes are mostly exposition.”

Peterson is quite good at explaining his music, comparing it to a narrative, literature. He says he’s not very interested in music that balances consonance and dissonance.

“Frankly, it it’s Mozart, I’m not interested. I’m always interested in the dramatic flow of things—if there is no conflict, I can’t buy into it.”

Jody Rockmaker is a composer and a professor of music at ASU. He has mentored Peterson since his freshman year.

“He’s one of the best students I’ve had here,” he says. “He has the energy, the intelligence, the talent to move forward.”

Peterson also has a proactive drive to make things happen. His desire to score for film prompted him to attend the filmmakers association on campus.

“I stood up and said, ‘I’m a composer, so let me know if any of you have a film you would like me to score.’”

From that initial meeting, Peterson found his first client. Jared Mercier asked him to score his film.

“Tom wrote the score for the film after the picture was locked. A film score is very much the same as a screenplay, a shot, a specific prop, the lighting of a scene. All of these elements of filmmaking are not done to be on their own, they are part of a whole,” he says. “Tom got that.”

Filmmaker Kenneth Yanga heard Peterson’s score for Mercier’s film and asked him to write a piece for his work.

“I just gave him the final cut of my short film, talked about what sound I wanted for a little bit, and right then and there he knew what music/score to write,” he recalls. “I was really worried at first that my film was just too bare and didn't show any emotion whatsoever. But when I heard the score for the first time, I knew that it would change my film for the better.”

Peterson’s sense of style, both personal and musical, lends itself to the collaborative process.

“If I write for a film, it’s more about the filmmaker. If the music serves the film well and serves those artistic goals, then I’m happy,” he says. “I’d very much like to be a filmmaker myself, so I’m inherently interested in that and interested in contributing to that medium."

For Peterson’s thesis concert, he wrote a 17-minute piece for orchestra and voice, a setting of William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis. The work is lush and accomplished, and well-played by the group he brought together.

“Students have to take advantage of the setting here at ASU,” Rockmaker says. “Tom has three or four other colleagues in composition, plus 60 some-odd other faculty. Tom went out and found out what he needed and took advantage of what was available to him. And now he’s off to other places and he’ll continue to do the same wherever he goes—he’ll do well in life. Tom makes situations when none is there.”

Tom Peterson graduated in May 2008. He will attend the Royal College of Music in London where he will study composition with Joseph Horovitz.

Read about other undergratuate researchers at ASU:
Part 1: Finding a Path
Part 2: Seeing the world with an economist's eye