2011-2012 SEASON
David Bernard
Founding Music Director of New York City's famed Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, DAVID BERNARD has performed in more than 20 countries on four continents. His incisive performances have been heard in many of the city's most prestigious venues, among them Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall and The Riverside Church, as well as on radio stations WNYC and WQXR and telecast on WCBS. He and his work have been profiled in Symphony Magazine, PlaybillArts.com, The Juilliard Journal, New York's Daily News, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Bernard and the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony are the First Prize Winner of The American Prize in Orchestra Performance, 2011.
David Bernard's current season is highlighted by a ten-concert tour of The People's Republic of China with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony.
David Bernard is a pianist and harpsichord/continuo player, and often leads Baroque works from the keyboard and performs in the dual role of soloist and conductor. He has also prepared a new edition of Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 1 and written a textbook of music theory, The Structural Principles of Music. Mr. Bernard lectures on musicology, music history and musicianship, most recently "Musicianship in Performance," an exploration of the decisions made when creating performances.
Devoted to the music of our own time, David Bernard has presented world premières of scores by Bruce Adolphe, Chris Caswell, John Mackey and Ted Rosenthal, while distinguished concert collaborators include Carter Brey, David Chan, Catherine Cho, Pedro Días, Bart feller, Whoopi Goldberg, Judith Ingolfsson, Christina Jennings, Jessica Lee, Jon Manasse, Todd Phillips and James Archie Worley.
David Bernard is passionately committed to elementary and secondary school music education, continuously developing new talent and providing solo performance experience to exciting young artists. His leadership in fundraising for music education programs has bolstered outreach, community music schools and conservatory preparatory programs - most notably the Harmony Program (a New York City initiative modeled after Venezuela's "El Sistema") and the Lucy Moses School. Mr. Bernard has also established the Parent's Association Endowed Scholarship Fund at The Juilliard School Pre-College Division.
Prior to the 1999 founding of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, David Bernard served as Music Director of the Stony Brook University Orchestra, the Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island and Theater Three. He also held the post of Assistant Conductor of both the Jacksonville and Stamford symphony orchestras.
David Bernard is an alumnus of The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, Stony Brook University, The Tanglewood Music Center and Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and studied with Sergiu Celibdache, David Lawton, Roger Nierenberg and Arthur Weisberg.
David Bernard's discography includes 17 albums spanning music from Vivaldi to Copland, and released on Amazon.com, iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody.