Jonathan Favero is a doctoral candidate in Music Composition and Theory at the University of California, Davis, and a former Mellon Public Scholars Fellow. His research interests include music in U.S. social movements, morality in music, and arts education in the U.S. criminal and juvenile justice systems. While many of Jonathan’s compositions have an ontological impetus—such as his second String Quartet, which contemplates violence as a seemingly inherent trait of human nature—recent works celebrate the spirit of democracy, egalitarianism, and the power of collaboration, as well as challenge audiences to consider our society’s relationship to those principles.