David Salvage
*18 December 1978
Works by David Salvage
Biography
David Salvage (b. 1978) is an American composer and pianist who lives in Bologna, Italy. Born into a family of non-musicians, at age four he asked his parents for a piano, a wish that was granted on the condition that he take lessons for five years. Instead, he took them for fifteen years, along the way developing an interest in composition, winning local and national competitions as a pianist and composer, becoming one of the first pianists selected for the Perlman Music Program, and winning a scholarship to Harvard University, where he shifted his focus to composition. He continued his studies at Manhattan School of Music and the City University of New York, earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on György Kurtàg, and went into academia full-time, teaching music theory and history. A lifelong Europhile, when the opportunity arose to live abroad for a while, he took it, and now he is a dual citizen of Italy and the United States. He has composed for orchestra, film, choir, and ensembles of all kinds and has received over a hundred performances at venues ranging from the Juilliard School to the British Institute of Florence. His music can be as familiar as songs you’ve heard a thousand times or as strange as the latest musical novelty. What he strives for is not so much stylistic consistency as a faithfulness to human experience in all its variety. He enjoys reading, commiserating about current events with his wife, and playing backgammon with his children. His music can also be heard on Navona Records and his website, www.albumleaves.com.
About the music
I am a “seconda pratica” composer in the age of recordings. My compositions frequently have an extra-musical aspect, deriving their form from a narrative taken from a literary source, my own life, or my imagination. My listening habits range widely across the entire classical repertory, and therefore my compositions bear the stamp of music from the Middle Ages through to minimalism and spectralism. What matters to me isn’t so much stylistic consistency but fidelity to human experience in all its variety. Listening to my music is more like a trip to an alternative classical-music universe, with a repertory you haven’t heard before, than a meeting with an individual artist.