When Jaylin Vinson fell in love with music at six years old, it didn’t begin in a concert hall or a conservatory; it began in the Black church.
Growing up in Oklahoma City, he was surrounded by gospel music. His mother directed the choir, his brother on drums, and a community united through song.
“There was always this sense of musicality within my family that felt ordinary, that felt like it was every day,” Vinson recalls. “It was something that we did, not because we wanted to, but because we had to. It was like inevitable.”
That foundation in gospel music with its blend of individual virtuosity and collective communion would become the bedrock of Vinson’s approach to classical composition. Now based in Houston and a recent graduate of Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, the young composer is part of a new generation redefining what contemporary classical music can sound and feel like.
When Vinson picked up the violin at 11, he nearly quit when things got difficult, as most kids do. But something made him hold on. By his teens, he discovered that his true passion was creating. Composition became the ultimate form of collaboration, a way to build community through sound.
“I never get used to that feeling of creating a new work with new people,” he says. “It’s just such an exhilarating experience.”
Vinson describes his music as embodying “unadulterated joy.” Even when a piece doesn’t sound overtly optimistic, there’s always hope emerging from within it, a reflection of who he is. His work draws from the rhythms and realities of Black life, blending classical training with gospel roots, hip-hop sensibilities, and what he calls “cultural memory.”
That signature sound will be on full display at Performing Arts Houston’s New/Now on March 20-21 at the Wortham Theater Center. His piece, “Dark Matter,” created in collaboration with Kinetic Ensemble and acclaimed flutist Tyler Martin, is inspired by the literary imagination of science fiction writer Octavia Butler and explores themes of Afrofuturism, imagining Black futures through art.
Austin Lewellen, who works with Kinetic Ensemble, Houston’s unconducted string orchestra committed to amplifying diverse and newly composed classical music, has witnessed Vinson’s creative process up close. The two have been in each other’s orbit for years through Rice’s music community, but their collaboration deepened about a year ago when Vinson approached the ensemble with his vision for “Dark Matter.”
“He came in with a really clear vision. He’s a really diligent writer. He thinks along so many different angles,” Lewellen says. “Having the chance to see sketches and hear works-in-development has left Lewellen increasingly excited. “I can tell that this is going to be a really special collaboration for us.”
The piece tackles profound questions about change, humanity, and our relationship to the environment. The opening movement, “Terrestrial Space,” wrestles with a quote from Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”: “Everything you touch, you change. Everything you change changes you.”
“We’ve had a pretty intense Midas touch on the environment with climate change,” Vinson explains. “But ironically, even though we’ve sped up the change of our environment, we’ve become resistant to changing our own behavior.” That tension between constant change and stubborn resistance drives the musical conflict in the piece.
Being a Black composer in classical music means confronting an uncomfortable truth that representation in this space remains scarce. But Vinson wants people to know that Black composers have always been here.
“The stories get told a certain way that makes us feel invisible because that’s almost intentional,” he says, citing pioneers like Florence Price and contemporary composers like Houston’s own Joel Thompson, part of the “Black Nificent Seven” collective.
“There is a well-known lack of diversity in classical music,” Lewellen says. “For someone like Jaylin to have such a high-profile performance like this, bringing visibility and creating representation that people can point to and say, ‘look, this is something that I could maybe be’—it’s just huge.”
“There is a well-known lack of diversity in classical music,” Lewellen says. “For someone like Jaylin to have such a high-profile performance like this, bringing visibility and creating representation that people can point to and say, ‘look, this is something that I could do’. It’s just huge.”
Vinson envisions a classical music world where diversity is about expanding what greatness can be.
“The window in which we consider greatness has always been narrow,” he says. “It doesn’t mean we have to lower the bar. It just means we have to make the bar a little bit wider.”
