David Singer is an internationally acclaimed musician whose performances include the White House for President Jimmy Carter and later for President Bill Clinton. He was a guest artist for many seasons with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society and performed chamber music concerts with Yehudi Menuhin, Yo-Yo Ma, Rudolf Serkin and members of the Guarneri and Emerson String Quartets. David Singer is an Emeritus co-Principal Clarinetist of the multi-Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His performances have been seen on the BBC and heard on Sirius XM.
Singer performed with Yehudi Menuhin in Bela Bartok’s Contrasts for violin, clarinet and piano in Carnegie Hall and was also a featured performer for six summers at the Marlboro Music Festival.
Naxos and American Classics released Singer’s recording of the Aaron Copland Clarinet Concerto and from England, Gramophone Magazine wrote, “Singer’s Copland performance is one of the finest accounts around. His playing is exceptional…sensitive and expressive…technically brilliant.”
Joseph Horowitz wrote in The New York Times about David Singer, “An exceptionally gifted clarinetist, to describe his playing would be to enumerate a catalogue of virtues.”
Singer appeared with actress, Stockard Channing in the play, “The Lady and the Clarinet” at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut and Alex Klein of The New York Times wrote: “moods are eloquently and wittingly reflected in the musical passages played by David Singer. There is a breath-catching single steady, elongated tone: a startling moment in which the words and the music come together.”
The Max Reger Institute of Karlsruhe, Germany selected a recording David Singer made with legendary pianist Rudolf Serkin in 1977 of the Max Reger Clarinet Sonata in Bb, op 107 and it was remastered and reissued by former recording engineer of the BBC Andrew Rose and Pristine Classical in 2021.
Professor Singer helped establish the now thriving chamber music program and collaborative faculty/student performances at Montclair State University, NJ where he served as Coordinator of Chamber Music and Woodwinds, Professor of Clarinet for 23. He was awarded Emeritus status from the University in October 2012. He also taught at Yale and Princeton.
He has served on the Music Advisory Board of Young Musicians Foundation of Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to helping many of the most accomplished young musicians in Southern California, ages 10 – 26, thrive through creating performance opportunities and scholarships.
Rudolf Jettel, Principal Clarinetist of the Vienna Philharmonic, was his musical father. He studied with him as a 12-year-old boy, sat next to him during performances of the Vienna Philharmonic during opera season, which is when he became obsessed with the idea that he wanted to be a musician. “I went back to study with Professor Jettel in my 20’s as an out of work musician and then in my 30’s I was performing at the most famous concert halls all over the world and Professor and his wife came to hear me perform.”
Today, you can hear David Singer perform nationally as a soloist as well as on many Orpheus recordings from Deutsche Grammophon on Sirius XM’s Symphony Hall.
He recently appeared as a 1920’s Polish klezmer musician at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in a play called “Indecent.”
Singer coaches young musicians throughout Southern California and performs with both the Singer Chamber Players and the Channel Islands Chamber Orchestra.
From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall marks David Singer’s debut as an author encapsulating his life’s journey on and off the revered stages of the world.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, he also lived in Philadelphia, Seattle, New York City for 35 years, and Vienna for two years. He resides in Camarillo, CA, where he lives with his wife Barb, and dogs Rosie and Raspberry. For more information, please see: www.singerclarinet.com.
To view David Singer’s resume, click here.