Excerpts from the liner notes to Three Generations Avshalomov Daniel plays Viola Music by David, Jacob & Aaron Troy 216 Albany Records 1996
David Avshalomov, 2004b
"Born in New York City (1946), raised there and in Portland, Oregon, David Avshalomov was destined to become a creative musician. Both his father Jacob (now retired) and his paternal grandfather Aaron were composer-conductors, and his mother Doris is a poet, former teacher, and trained singer. David studied piano and percussion, played in his father's Portland youth orchestras, learned the joys of madrigal singing at home, and sang in school choirs. He started composing as a self-taught teenager-like his grandfather-and conducted the premiere of his first choral work with his high-school choir.
"Attending Harvard on scholarship, he took a music degree. He played timpani in ensembles and as a soloist, sang as a professional chorister, composed, organized concerts, tried his hand at orchestral conducting, and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1967. Short tuneful works for piano, wind quintet, brass quartet, and violin with timpani date from this period.
"Conducting studies followed, starting with Stanley Chapple at the University of Washington in Seattle. There David finished his first orchestral work, Siege, soon transcribing it for band and conducting its premiere. During the Vietnam conflict, he served with distinction in the U.S. Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants in Washington, D.C. as a chorister and timpanist. There he polished his scoring for symphonic band (they premiered his Spring Rondo), mastered choral arranging, and in his off-duty hours conducted a local chorus and took conducting classes at Baltimore's Peabody Institute under Leo Mueller.
"Returning to civilian life in 1972, he attended the Aspen summer music festival-studying conducting with Morel, Torkanowsky, and Blomstedt, and composition with Charles Jones. His Allegro for pitched percussion quartet took first prize at the Festival competition.
"Resuming his graduate studies with Samuel Krachmalnick at UW (and Henry Holt at Seattle Opera) he earned his Doctorate in orchestral conducting in 1975, writing a distinguished dissertation on the Five Pieces for Orchestra of Schoenberg. His composition studies continued with Verrall, Bergsma, and Suderberg, producing his String Quartet in 1973 (his only brush with serialism), and Life's a Dreamboat for concert band. Concurrently he served as Music Director of the Bremerton Symphony. In 1976 he moved to Missoula, Montana to conduct the Symphony Orchestra and Chorale and teach at the University School of Music.
"A move to Los Angeles followed in 1978. After summer (1979) conducting study at Tanglewood with Bernstein, Schuller, and Ozawa, David held posts with several L.A.-area orchestras and toured in China. He guest-conducted locally and in the Pacific Northwest, and on tours in Japan and Eastern Europe. In 1980 he founded his own baroque ensemble, the Santa Monica Chamber Orchestra, leading and managing it for a decade. And he created educational concerts and shows for the Long Beach Symphony and School District. This period brought several new vocal works.
"In 1989 David retired his chamber orchestra, and relinquished his other orchestral posts. His composing immediately blossomed, yielding in short order his baroque-style Concerto con Timpani, the Variations on a Beethoven Theme for cello, the popular Elegy for string orchestra, several songs, and the Torn Curtain suite for viola and piano (a response to the liberation of Eastern Europe) written for his brother Daniel, violist of the American String Quartet, who recorded it for the Albany label. In Los Angeles, to underwrite his composing, he has also worked as a composer/producer of soundtracks for educational videos and audiotapes, as a project manager in the fields of publishing, instructional design, new media, and the Internet, as an urban forestry instructor, and as outreach coordinator for a prestigious private wildlands conservancy.
"In 1997, he traveled with his father Jacob to Moscow to record several CD's (for Marco Polo/Naxos) of the Chinese-style orchestral works that his grandfather, Aaron Avshalomov had written during his 30-year sojourn in China before the Revolution (plus David's own Elegy). In 1999, David guest-conducted at an extraordinary 80th-birthday concert for his father, with a Portland Youth Philharmonic Alumni orchestra performing music by three generations of Avshalomov composers.
"David's first major choral opus is Principles, a secular oratorio on texts by Thomas Jefferson, hammering issues of social justice and religious tolerance. His recent compositions include a choral setting of the Kedushah for the High Holy Days, a solo voice setting of the Hashkiveinu, a Cello Sonata with piano, an unaccompanied violin suite about the suffering of Russia (The Last Poet's Farewell), a virtuoso toccata for band (Prime Time), a solo Harp Sonata, a Sonata for Flute with piano, commissioned works for wind quintet (Around the year) and oboe with piano (Sonata Breve), and a series of songs, including Songs of Life Songs of Death on poems of Emily Dickinson. In 2003 he completed newly commissioned works for women's choir (Where You Go, I Will Go (Ruth and Naomi)] and string orchestra (Pangs of Love, for the San Jose Chamber Orchestra). He recently completed a large cycle setting Blake's complete Songs of Innocence and Experience for a cappella choir, and orchestrated his Dickinson songs in order to sing them with New York's Musica Bella Orchestra as part of a 3-concert festival of his compositions there in October of 2004.
"In David Avshalomov's music can be heard influences of both his father and grandfather, and the great 20th-century European and American tonal classical composers. He enjoys good music of all kinds. Grounded in the Western Classical tradition, he crafts his works in an original, accessible, modern romantic, neo-tonal style that balances a lyrical gift with a characteristic rhythmic vitality and dramatic flair, a style he has nurtured since his youth. The forms he creates are conservative and developmental, his compositional voice distinctive. His music has been performed professionally across the US and in Europe and Russia and recorded on Albany and Marco Polo/Naxos labels, and his conducting work is listed in "Who's Who in Music" and "Who's Who in the West."
Avshalomov and his wife (m. 1982), Randi Grafman, a psychotherapist, live in Santa Monica, CA. They have two teenage sons, Jesse and Zachary, who sing (opera/jazz), study voice, and play violin and saxophone. For balance, he enjoys reading, singing, walking, cycling, and the outdoors, the beach, mountain hiking, planting trees, backpacking, camping, wilderness."