Dave grew up playing rock guitar, with lots of Allman Brothers and Pink Floyd in his diet. After having his ears opened up by Phish, he began a deep dive into jazz performance and eventually shifted his focus to composition full-time.
Dave often writes acoustic percussion music and produces electronic dance tracks, always with attention to groove and expressive timbres. He advocates for a more inclusive, polystylistic approach to music education, free of the structural racism and stylistic limitations of traditional music theory pedagogy.
He has a Ph.D in music composition from Princeton University and was an Assistant Professor of composition and theory at Georgetown (2016-2019), where he developed a completely new curriculum based on stylistic diversity and social justice. Dave’s music has been performed widely by groups such as So Percussion, Sandbox Percussion, Third Coast Percussion, Jack Quartet, and Decoda Ensemble. His writing has appeared in I Care If You Listen, New Music Box, Sounding Out!, and Indiana Theory Review, and he is a board member of New Works Project.