David Graves has been writing a variety of musical works since the 1970s, including jazz, pop, electronic and "neoclassical" pieces for film, theater, studio recordings and orchestra. He has studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and City College of San Francisco. In 2003 and 2005 David was a resident composer with the Djerassi Resident Artist Program where he was awarded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellowship. He was also a resident composer with the Berkeley Symphony for two consecutive seasons and wrote six pieces that were performed as a part of their Under Construction series. His large-scale ambient works have been installed in a redwood canyon (tree/sigh), The LAB (Deciduous), and San Francisco's renowned AudioBus (Human Street Textures). Since 2004, he has been the Coordinator for the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and has had pieces performed annually by that ensemble as well as the Irregular Resolutions composer collective. In the late 2000s he released albums with the prog-rock group ScienceNV, recorded a collection of pop vocal tunes (The Discontented), received grants from the American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer, was sound designer for Aurora Theater's Miss Julie, and developed a collection of short video "dreams" (Living in the Village of My Dreams). In the past year, he was sound designer for Shotgun Theater's production of Mary Stuart, performed as AmbientBlack in the Illuminated Forest, created soundscapes for the California Academy of Sciences' featurette Alien Worlds, and installed Fog and Expectations in Urban Bazaar's backyard garden.

(Above photo by Marshall Berman, courtesy Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.)