David T. Bridges

The music of composer and clarinetist David T. Bridges is often driven by motivic transformations and unifies extended techniques with classic and narrative structures to provoke a visceral response. Bridges’s compositions have been performed by ensembles including Del Sol Quartet, Contemporaneous, ensemble mise-en, Mivos, and Cadillac Moon Ensemble and featured at the New Music on the Bayou Festival in Louisiana, Reciprocity Collaborative at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Red Note Festival at Illinois State University, Hot Air Music Festival at San Francisco Conservatory, and Composers Now Festival in NYC. His string quartet This Fragmented Old Man was recorded by the Pedroia Quartet and released on Navona records.

He earned degrees in Music Theory and Composition from Hofstra University, Queens College, and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He studied composition with Tania León, Bruce Saylor, Lee Chandler Carter, and Herbert Deutsch.

Bridges’s multifaceted career has included teaching music theory at Brooklyn College, designing and teaching a composition series at Buckley Country Day School, a tenure as associate conductor of the CUNY Contemporary Music Ensemble, and performing new music on clarinet. Currently, he manages concerts and other events for Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center and is on the Board of Directors for The Astoria Choir where he develops and manages collaborative programs fostering the interaction of regional composers with the ensemble and audiences, including a commissioning series.