Biography

David Avshalomov is a distinguished third-generation classical composer and orchestral conductor as well as an accomplished vocalist. He was born in New York in 1946, grew up there and in Oregon, and has for many years been based in Santa Monica, California. He represents a musical lineage whose story stretches from the Caucasus to Siberia, through China, to the US. His father Jacob is a nationally renowned composer and conductor, now retired, and his mother Doris a well-known Northwest poet.

Singer
As a student, David sang in school choruses, studied piano, music theory, and percussion, played timpani in student orchestras, and learned the joys of madrigal singing at home. He started composing as a teenage autodidact—like his grandfather—and conducted the premiere of his first choral work with his high-school choir. At Harvard college, where he earned a B.A. in music, Magna cum Laude (and phi beta kappa), he was a professional chorister and a frequent oratorio and motet soloist and madrigalist. He served a tour of duty as a bass vocalist in the Singing Sergeants of the USAF Band, and was also a soloist, arranger, and timpanist. Since moving to Los Angeles, he has sung with such specialized groups as Madrigalia, Cantori di Mezzogiorno, and Soffio di Viento. He continues to sing professionally with a number of local choruses, and gives solo vocal recitals featuring his own compositions.

Avshalomov is noted for his powerful and highly nuanced baritone voice, wide range, and emotional renditions. He brings to his own music and the music of others, the sensibilities, interpretation, and expression of a mature vocal artist.

Composer
Grounded in the Western classical tradition, David Avshalomov creates his works in an accessible, modern neo-romantic style that balances a lyric gift with a characteristic rhythmic vitality and dramatic flair. The forms he crafts are conservative and often developmental, his compositional voice distinctive. His composition teachers included Charles Jones (at Aspen), and John Verrall, Robert Suderberg, and William Bergsma (at the University of Washington), and the influences on his style include the great 20th-century European and American tonal composers, and both his father and his paternal grandfather, Aaron Avshalomoff.

In Avshalomov’s words:

"Melody is the thread of my daily life. I still find new paths through old musical forms, and fresh expression based in folk idioms and drawing on old melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic roots."

Avshalomov has composed music for orchestra, band, chamber ensembles, solo instruments, solo voice, and choruses, in forms ranging in scale from songs and incidental pieces to full-length oratorio. Recently he has been writing much vocal music, including songs and choral settings. He is receiving an increasing number of commissions from such ensembles as the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. His compositions have been performed professionally across the U.S., in Europe, and in Russia, and have been recorded on the Albany and Naxos/Marco Polo labels.*

LIST OF WORKS

Conductor
David Avshalomov earned a D.M.A. in conducting from the University of Washington (with Samuel Krachmalnick), writing a distinguished dissertation on the Five Pieces for Orchestra of Schoenberg. He did additional studies at Tanglewood (with Bernstein, Ozawa, and Schuller), Seattle Opera (Henry Holt), the Blomstedt Institute, Aspen (Torkanowsky, Morel), and the Peabody Institute (Leo Mueller).

For over 20 years, he worked professionally as a conductor of orchestras, choruses, bands, and opera. In 1980 he founded the Santa Monica Chamber Orchestra, a period-practice baroque ensemble. He was music director of several other ensembles on both coasts, and has guest-conducted over 40 ensembles in the U.S. (and Japan). He has toured in the Far East and Europe, and in 1997 traveled with his father Jacob to Moscow to record several CD's of the Chinese-style orchestral works that his grandfather, Aaron Avshalomoff had written during his 30-year sojourn in China before the Revolution (plus David’s own Elegy).* The artistry of his conducting work has garnered listings in Who’s Who in Music and Who’s Who in the West.

Avshalomov is also a committed environmentalist. For balance, he walks in mountains and wilderness, and plants trees.

CURRICULUM VITAE

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*Relevant Discography
Click on « buttons to download and hear MP3 music samples.

Torn Curtain «, Suite for Viola and Piano, Dan Avshalomov, viola, Pamela Pyle, Piano
Albany, “Three Generations Avshalomov"

Elegy for Strings, « Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer
Naxos/Marco Polo, "Aaron Avshalomoff, « Orchestral Works, vol. 3"

Sampler from Songs of Innocence and of Experience « (Blake), Ocean Park Chamber Singers/Bruner, Raven Music

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Contact: davshalomov@earthlink.net

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