David Bithell

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Biography


You can find a copy of my current resumé here.

David Bithell (b. 1976), currently an Assistant Professor of Composition
Studies at the University of North Texas, is devoted to the exploration of the intersection between experimental music and theater.  His use of live performance,
video, staging, music technology, and improvisation create abstract narratives
that balance between the tragic and comic.

He has performed his compositions throughout the United States and in Europe in both academic and public settings.  Recently, his composition "The President Has His Photograph Taken" for solo trumpet, electronics, and video projection was premiered at the IS ARTI Festival in Kaunas, Lithuania and subsequently performed at the 2006 International Computer Music Conference in New Orleans, the 2007 SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Art, and at numerous universities in the United States.   Other recent performances include those at the MANCA Festival in Nice, France under the auspices of the France/Berkeley fund and in collaboration with UC Berkeley's Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT) and the Centre National de Création Musicale (CIRM), those with the sfSoundSeries, California Institute for the Arts Vexations Festival, and the Berkeley New Music Project.

  As a trumpet player specializing in contemporary and improvised musics he has devoted himself to the exploration of new possibilities for that instrument.  He is the trumpet player and co-organizer for the sfSoundGroup (a West Coast experimental music collective) and has played with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, and the La Jolla Symphony. He has also collaborated with many composers on the creation of new works for trumpet live electronics, most notably with Ali Momeni and Olly Wilson, and has performed the United States premieres of works by Ronald Bruce Smith and Jan Maresz.
  
    David is co-organizer of the sfSoundSeries, an innovative series of new music and improvisation.  In addition, he has organized retrospective concerts of the music of Robert Erickson and Kenneth Gaburo as well as many performances of student compositions and musical theater while at the University of California, San Diego and UC Berkeley. 

    His interest in ethnomusicology has led him to study central Javanese Gamelan both in Indonesia and at UC Berkeley.  He has performed with the Javanese gamelan ensemble Sari Raras for the past four years.
    David Bithell is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition Studies at the University of North Texas' College of Music. Prior to this appointment, Bithell was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's Townsend Center for the Humanities and taught music theory at Pomona College.  In 2004 he earned a Ph.D in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley from which he received his M.A. in 2001.  He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego in Music with Honors in Composition. He studied composition and computer music with Edmund Campion, David Wessel, Cindy Cox, Brian Ferneyhough, and Roger Reynolds. He studied trumpet primarily with Edwin Harkins -- whose performance art duo [THE] has been very influential on his recent work.