A talented and largely self-taught musician, David won First-Chair Flute in the All-American High School Band competition in his senior year, and toured the US and Canada with the group. David went on to earn a BA in Musical Composition from Montclair Conservatory, working his way through school by playing jazz gigs and repairing early computers. While at Montclair, David won the gold medal of the prestigious NYU Young Composers' Contest for three years running. This exposure led to a job with New York's Ames Agency as a television commercial and film composer. At Ames, David wrote and produced the award-winning score for Armstrong Tire's 'Tiger Paws' spots, one of the longest-running advertising campaigns in television history.


Not satisfied with commercial success, David moved to New Mexico, where he worked with early digital computers and test systems in research programs at Sandia, Los Alamos National Laboratories and White Sands/Alamogordo Proving Grounds. With the help and advice of senior Los Alamos scientists, he performed a series of groundbreaking laboratory experiments in the silence of the desert, exploring the effects of music and sound on living beings. The results of this work inspired him to study Vedic music and rasa-tattva (the art of transcendental emotions) with Indian maestro Ali Akbar Khan in San Rafael, California. He quickly became expert in Indian raga composition and improvisation, using voice, flute, esraj, sarangi, mrdanga and other exotic instruments.


Etichete Technorati: ,,,