David Chidsey is a guitarist/educator with a broad vision of musical concepts, ideas, and teaching philosophies.  After studying music with professors Jeffrey Erickson, William Day and Ann Applegate at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County College, David entered a college-conservatory music program at Lawrence University in Appleton WI where he studied classical guitar performance.  

After graduating from the conservatory, David earned an MM in guitar performance from the UW-Madison where he taught guitar as an assistant to Javier Calderon.

 

Recently David has been working feverishly to prepare recordings and program concerts with his guitar orchestras including the New Jersey Guitar Orchestra, NYC Guitar Orchestra, and the United States Guitar Orchestra. 

 

David has participated in many prestigious music programs including the Aspen Summer Music School, where he studied with the famed Sharon Isbin of the Juilliard School. In Vienna, Austria David studied music and language with IES.  David has also participated in the Stetson International Guitar Workshop, National Guitar Summer Workshop, and Guitare Lachine. David has participated in masterclasses with Paul Galbraith, Go Nagano, Judicael Perroy, Oscar Ghigllia, LAGQ, Antigoni Goni, Jason Vieaux, Lilly Afshar and many more. At the 2005 National Guitar Summer Workshop, David was chosen from hundreds of guitarists as one of a select few to perform for the Paul Galbraith Masterclass.

 

In addition to the highly disciplined art of classical guitar, David is also a jazz improvisor.  Having studied with Les Thimmig, Thomas McComb and Jeff Erickson. David has performed for the Gunther Schuller Artist-in Residence concert series at UW-Madison as a featured performer for two of Mr. Schuller's Compositions (Variations on a theme of John Lewis and Abstraction).

 

As a music education professional, David has presented material and participated in NYSSMA state conferences, NJMEA state conferences, JEN, NAFME, ASTA and CMA national conferences.

 

"My focus is to work with music students and scaffold their development as soloists and chamber orchestra musicians.  Self-governance is a key aspect of musicianship (particularly chamber music) that all young musicians benefit exponentially from exploring.  I've been honored to have had the opportunity to study with some of the world's leading pedagogues and artists, And my vocation has become one with helping music students succeed through generation and elaborative learning techniques."