Photo Credit: Ian Evenstar

Biography

David Werfelmann is an award-winning American composer of instrumental, vocal, and electronic music whose works are widely performed and recorded by ensembles and soloists throughout the United States. His orchestral music has been performed by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra as well as the major orchestras of the USC Thornton School of Music, IU Jacobs School of Music, and the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music. David’s Arclight Alley, commissioned and premiered by the Lawrence University Wind Ensemble, has also been performed by the wind ensembles of USC Thornton School of Music, CSU Stanislaus, and the SCSBOA Honors Band. Among the many saxophone quartets that perform his work Hypercolor are the Zzyzx, Red Rock, Lawrence University, and Georgia Southern University Quartets, as well as the Fischoff Award-winning Barkada Saxophone Quartet.

David’s music is heard frequently at conferences, festivals, and recitals around the United States and Europe, including the CMS International Conference in Belgium (2019), the C4 Premieres Workshop, the USF New Music Festival, the NOW HEAR Festival, NACUSA and SCI conferences, North American Saxophone Alliance conferences, the Society of Electroacoustic Music in the United States convention, the CSU Fullerton New Music Festival, the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Navy Band International Saxophone Symposium, the Los Angeles Composers Project, the Zeltsman Marimba Festival, the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, and at concerts in Bologna and Ravenna, Italy. Among the many honors David’s works have received, his orchestral work The Mad Machine won the BMI Student Composer Award in 2011.

David has received commissions from the Wisconsin Music Teachers Association, saxophonists Kim Reese, Sara Kind, Andrew Harrison, and Alex Sellers, pianists Michael Mizrahi and Rafael Liebich, Slipstream, the HOCKET piano duo, the Hear Now Ensemble, and recently a consortium of college wind ensembles in the US. David’s works have been professionally recorded by The Uproar Duo, the Lawrence University Wind Ensemble, the Now Hear Ensemble, the Barkada Quartet, and Slipstream. Additionally, his works have been broadcasted by radio stations in Saint Louis (RAFSTL), Los Angeles (KUSC), Wisconsin (WPR), and New York (WCNY), and by the online radio station Kinetics Radio.

Originally, from Portland, Oregon, David has received degrees from USC (DMA), Indiana University (MM), and Lawrence University (BM). In addition to writing music, David is a percussionist and committed educator having held teaching positions at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and USC Thornton School of Music. David is currently Associate Professor of Music and Director of the B.A. in Music Program at Webster University in St. Louis.