David Garner

Background

About David Garner

Garner won the 2015 American Prize in Composition for his String Quartet No. Three recent CDs featuring Garner's works have won Global Music Awards. Garner's full-length opera, Mary Pleasant at Land's End, is close to completion, and had a full musical workshop in 2017 (available on YouTube). Mary Pleasant at Land’s End is comprised of two acts (about two hours of music total), and calls for four principal artists, six comprimario artists, and mixed chorus. Garner’s first full-length opera, it is replete with the soaring vocalism for which he is so widely admired, and also uniquely employs rhythmic motifs from Haitian Vodou traditions. Hernandez’s libretto draws on colorful language and situations from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast days. Centaur Records has released the award-winning CD,"Surviving: Women's Words", comprised of four of Garner's song-cycles setting women Holocaust-era and survivors' poetry. The CD is the culmination of the Jewish Music and Poetry Project, an offshoot of Ensemble for These Times. The CD features Nanette McGuinness, Dale Tsang and Adaiha MacAdam-Somer. Links for the CD and a great review by Stephen Smoliar are below. E4TT's CD "Once/Memory/Night" is being released online in June, 2020. E4TT's next CD,"Guernica", is set to be released in the fall of 2020. Both CDs contain works by Garner in the 2020-2021 season performances of Garner's music will be included in the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series, Ensemble for These Times' Cassandra Project, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Faculty Artist Series. All-Garner programs: March 15th, 2021 Premiere of Garner's Piano Quintet, featuring the Del Sol Quartet with Dale Tsang, piano. San Francisco Conservatory April 23rd, 2021: Virtuoso Keyboard Music, with Dale Tsang, piano and Joby Bell, organ. First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA