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David Witten
Professor, Cali School of Music, Dean's Office, College of the Arts
- Office:
- Chapin Hall
- Email:
- wittend@montclair.edu
- Phone:
- 973-655-4379
- Degrees:
- BA, John Hopkins University
- MFA, SUNY Buffalo
- DMA, Boston University
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Profile
DAVID WITTEN
Pianist David Witten's international career has included numerous concert tours in Ireland, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Europe, Mexico, and South America. As the recipient of a 1990 Fulbright Scholar award, Witten spent five months teaching and concertizing throughout Brazil, and he is frequently invited back to give concerts and masterclasses.
Closer to home, Witten's performances have included solo appearances with the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and various chamber music collaborations with members of the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Witten has also been active in contemporary music. He has recorded piano music of Nicholas Van Slyck (Titanic Records), and has commissioned over a dozen new works for Soli Espri, a chamber trio he founded in Boston with clarinetist Chester Brezniak and mezzo-soprano D?Anna Fortunato. With flutist Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin, Witten formed Dúo Clásico; their recording, Flute and Piano Music of Latin America, is available on the Musical Heritage Society label. More recently, Marco Polo Records released Witten?s solo album, Piano Music of Manuel M. Ponce.
Witten's involvement in music has not been limited to performance. He is the editor of Nineteenth-Century Piano Music: Essays in Performance and Analysis (Garland Publishing, 1997), which includes his landmark analytical study of the Chopin Ballades.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Witten received his early training at the Peabody Conservatory, and at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. His undergraduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University led to a degree in Psychology. Later graduating with high honors from Boston University, he earned the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance. His most influential teachers have been Reynaldo Reyes, Benjamin Oren, Walter Hautzig, Leo Smit, and Dorothy Taubman. After twenty years as an active recitalist, chamber music pianist, and teacher in the Boston area, Witten accepted a position at Montclair State University, where he is currently Coordinator of Keyboard Studies.
As an enthusiastic photographer, Professor Witten has won top prizes in several international photography competitions. He had a solo photography exhibition in Budapest, Hungary in 2004, and his photographs were recently published on www.lafolia.com.