Biography
About
David Eaton (born July 2, 1949, Cleveland, Ohio) is an American composer and conductor. He has been music director of the New York City Symphony since 1985. His published biography lists 105 original compositions and more than 900 songs, transcriptions, and arrangements.
He studied at the Cleveland Music School Settlement, Ohio State University, and the Tanglewood Institute, and attended conducting classes with Seiji Ozawa, Roger Norrington, Gustav Meier, Zubin Mehta, and Gunther Herbig. After a Carnegie Hall debut in 1989, the New York Daily News called the New York City Symphony “one of America’s finest orchestras.”
He has led the orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Madison Square Garden, the Apollo Theater, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has appeared as a guest conductor in Asia, Israel, Europe, and the Americas. From 1998 to 2000 he conducted the Goldman Band. From 2018 to 2024 he was principal conductor of the Hyo Jeong Youth Orchestra in South Korea.
A long-standing advocate for peace through music, he collaborated with Israeli vocalist David D’Or on the cantata Halelu — Songs of David, premiered in Belgrade in 2007. Other concert works include Morning’s Calm (United Nations, 2001), The Hope of All Ages (commissioned after September 11), Melavations (Lincoln Center), and Juxtapositions (Detroit Symphony Orchestra).
In 2022 he published What Music Tells Me: Beauty, Truth and Goodness and Our Cultural Inheritance. This site catalogs only titles that appear in public discographies and on Apple Music. It is not affiliated with the London theatre musician of the same name.