Our Conductor
David Van Alstyne was born, in 1947, in New Haven, Connecticut and grew up in Los Angeles, California.
In school orchestras and bands he played piano, percussion, tuba, French horn, cello, and string bass.
He had many friends and acquaintances within the local Hollywood culture and was part of the marching band in the Warner Brothers film, “The Music Man.”
He traveled a great deal with his family. At age 15, as his father taught American law at the 1962 Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, he lived for the summer in the same Austrian palace where the movie “The Sound of Music” was to be filmed soon afterwards.
In Austria and Germany he was deeply affected by the many iconic places and relics from Adolf Hitler’s relatively recent Third Reich.
He also learned first hand the meaning of personal freedom and good vs. evil as embodied in the Cold War when he was taken into Communist East Germany and through the Berlin Wall on the bloody first anniversary of its construction.
During High School, as a pianist he performed often in the Los Angeles area. He studied with Michael Cannon, who was a student at Julliard of the great pedagogue Rosina Levine. Later David studied with Gwendolyn Lund, who had been taught by a student of Theodore Leschetizky, one of the most important pupils of Franz Liszt. This rich musical heritage had a strong influence on the formation of Van Alstyne’s musical thinking.
One of his favorite early musical memories is of sitting close to the stage, at UCLA, for a recital given by one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth-century, Artur Rubinstein. After the miraculous recital, he attended a small party where Rubinstein regaled the people with personal stories, and David shook his hand.
He studied in the excellent Applied Organ Performance program at BYU. On his LDS mission in London, England, he was asked to give a summer-long series of organ recitals in the church’s Hyde Park Chapel.
Back home again, David studied further with Salt Lake Tabernacle Organists Alexander Schreiner and Robert Cundick. He also studied composition with Leroy Robertson, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Alexei Haieff who was a friend and protégé of Igor Stravinsky. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Utah in 1971.
In 1972, he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to help care for his ailing father-in-law. While there, he taught at the Ulster College of Music. He was also accepted for post-graduate work at Queen’s University, but finding his family surrounded by the worst of sectarian violence and murder, which was all around Belfast, he moved his family back to Salt Lake City in 1973.
It was when he was pursuing a Master’s Degree at the University of Utah in 1974 that David began his enjoyment of a 34-year career with Ballet West. He played piano for their classes and rehearsals and performed with them on stage and in the pit. He was also their Associate Conductor for 25 years.
In studying conducting, his most important close associations were with Varujan Kojian (who had been a conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Music Director of the Utah Symphony and was Music Director of Ballet West) and with Terence Kern (who had conducted all over the world as Music Director of the Royal Scottish Ballet, the Royal Festival Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, and Ballet West).
David performed on the piano with Ballet West at major venues in Salt Lake City, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Tempe, Albuquerque, Aspen, Denver, Detroit, Chicago, Nashville, West Palm Beach, Raleigh, Washington, D.C. and New York City.
He also conducted ballets with the Utah Symphony, the Utah Chamber Orchestra, the Anchorage Philharmonic, the Spokane Symphony, the Portland Symphony, the Billings Philharmonic, the Boise Philharmonic, the San Jose Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony and the resident orchestra at Wolf Trap, near Washington, D.C.
In 1997, he began conducting the New American Philharmonic. He also pursues strong interests in teaching, performing and composing.
David has two sons, David and Alexander, one beautiful and intelligent granddaughter, Laylah, and resides in Salt Lake City with his wife, Annie.
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