BIOGRAPHY
David is an accomplished composer, scholar and pianist. He has collaborated with many ensembles in the United States and in Mexico, including as president of Ossia, a new music group based in Rochester, NY. His award-winning compositions range from solo pieces to large orchestral works and independent film scores. He holds degrees from Duke University, the University of Louisville, and the Eastman School of Music, where he earned his PhD. Some recent awards and scholarships include a Raymond N. Ball Dissertation Year Fellowship (Eastman), the Belle S. Gitelman Composition Award, a Hanson Institute for American Music Commission, the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize, a Composer’s Assistant Program grant from the American Music Center, participation in the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and the Grawemeyer Fellowship (University of Louisville). The short film Joe: Body Electric (for which David provided an electronic score in 2005) has been seen in over 25 film festivals around the world, earning several awards.
As an active champion of new works, David is the co-artistic director and pianist for the ensemble Out of Context. Specializing in new works and transcriptions, this flexible-instrumentation group has toured across the United States presenting concerts and master classes since 2007. The ensemble frequently collaborates with other musicians and composers and will travel to Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and New York for performances starting in 2010.
When not composing or performing, David enjoys studying the music of his contemporaries and 19th/20th century music. He is currently preparing four articles on Franz Liszt for publication, adapted from his dissertation about compositional, theoretical and musicological features of Liszt’s Funeral Odes.