Biography    

David Gompper has lived and worked professionally as a pianist, a conductor, and a composer in New York, San Diego, London, Nigeria, Michigan, Texas and Iowa. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London with Jeremy Dale Roberts, Humphrey Searle and Phyllis Sellick. After teaching in Nigeria, he received his doctorate at the University of Michigan, taught at the University of Texas, Arlington, and since 1991 has been Professor of Composition and Director of the Center for New Music at the University of Iowa. In 2002 - 2003 Gompper was in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching, performing and conducting at the Moscow Conservatory.

Gompper's compositions are heard throughout the United States and Europe. In 1999 his Transitus (for wind ensemble) premiered at Carnegie Hall, and a number of his works have premiered in London's Wigmore Hall, including: Hommage a W. A. (William Albright) for piano; and Shades of Love, a song cycle on the poetry of Constantin Cavafy.

Subsequent returns to Moscow have included premieres and performances of Crossed, Music in the Glen, Six Love Poems, Star of the County Down, and Butterfly Dance. His Outside Cage for piano and electronics was premiered at the Institute of Music and Acoustics (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany last June. His latest work for violin and piano, Echoes - serving as the prototype for his Violin Concerto - was taken on a 12-concert tour throughout the US, Canada and Europe this past fall with Wolfgang David, a violinist from Vienna with whom Gompper actively collaborates as a pianist and composer. They have recorded two CDs on the Albany label, with a third disc forthcoming. Gompper's An Elm We Lost and Kuta Muela appear on the CD Monsterology (Albany Records TROY900), as well as Musica segreta (Albany Records, TROY956).

His Spirals for two violins and string orchestra will be premiered in Albania in April of 2008, and will be recorded in Bratislava the following month. Two chamber works, Crossed and a trio version of Spirals will also be recorded in May by Studio New Music, the new music ensemble at the Moscow Conservatory. He has been asked to write a fanfare for the Illinois Valley Symphony Orchestra (December 2008), and a chamber opera (November 2010).