Derek David is a composer, conductor, and music educator based in Boston, Massachusetts. His dramatic and vibrant chamber, vocal, and orchestral music has been performed in both Europe and throughout the United States. He has been commissioned by Juventas Ensemble, Verona Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet & Nicholas Davies, violist Jesse Morrison, SAKURA Cello Quintet, The Sonica Quartet, The Sounding Board, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music New Music Ensemble, and the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO). His music has been featured on LA Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight Festival and the Boston Festival for New Jewish Music.
Derek has received grants from the Cambridge Cultural Council, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. Derek has been the recipient of the EAMA Nadia Boulanger Institute Prize (2011), Morton Gould ASCAP Award (2011), first place in the 2015 American Prize in Composition–Chamber Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s New Art Song Competition, and the SFCM Hoefer Prize for his cumulative body of work. He is a 2024 and 2025 Artist-in-Residence at the Byrdcliffe Artist Guild in Woodstock, NY.
As a Yiddishist, Derek has followed his passion into teaching, absorbing, and researching music of the Yiddish world. Since 2018, Derek has been the musical director and conductor of ‘A Besere Velt’ - אַ בעסערע װעלט, the largest chorus dedicated to the performance and preservation of Yiddish repertoire. As a vocalist, he studied folk music with Ethel Reim and has presented solo interpretations of Yiddish folksong in academic and artistic settings. He has presented on Yiddish music and folksong at Sorbonne Université, Bard College Conservatory of Music, and Lehrhaus in Somerville, MA. He is choral director of the Yiddish New York annual festival, a KlezKanada Azrieli Scholar (2024) and KlezKanada Freed Fellow (2025).
Derek studied composition at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music and received Masters and Doctoral degrees from The New England Conservatory of Music, with additional studies at the Aspen Music Festival and Nadia Boulanger Institute. As an enthusiastic educator, Derek has taught theory and musicianship at the New England Conservatory, The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, at The Walden School, Sunset Chamberfest, and was previously a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University where he was a five-time recipient of the Distinction in Teaching Award. His areas of interest extend to Medieval theory and musicology, The Beatles, and music of the Yiddish world. He is currently Lecturer in Music at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“A true musical jewel of the 21st Century” (String Quartet No. 1)
— Sabino Pena, ClassiqueNews
“dazzled by [his] capability and musicality...masterful demonstration of technique” (Viola Sonata)
— Composer John Adams
“[a] daring work… that left us wanting to hear more.” (String Quartet No. 1)
— The Boston Musical Intelligencer