David Chesky

Grammy-nominated David Chesky is a composer of orchestral works, operas and ballets, an author of children’s books, a jazz pianist, and a world-renowned innovator of audio technologies. Critics describe his music as “highly individualistic,” “memorable,” “dynamic” and “exotic.” David Chesky has earned great respect for his fresh and unique approach to musical compositions, which span the jazz and classical genres. Captivating audiences around the world, The New York Times raves, “Chesky combines a gritty sophistication with street-level energy and currents of exotic folkishness.” 
 
Chesky developed his own style of composition heralded as “Urban Orchestral” music, merging classical techniques with sounds emanating from the streets of New York. This unique style has critics raving, “Chesky fuses diverse influences into a musical language all his own.” (Gramophone Magazine). This style produced genre-bending works including his Rap Symphony, and Concertos for electric guitar, piano, violin, and a double concerto for violin and cello, featured on 2011 albums Urbanicity and String Theory. Classics Today praised String Theory, “This music has integrity, and it gets under your skin.” His solo piano album, The New York Rags, was cited by The Absolute Sound as "being one of the best piano albums ever recorded." Chesky’s ballets, including Hope, commissioned and toured by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, as well as his Central Park Dances, Urbanicity, and The New York Variations,
reflect modern life in a fast city. His full-length children’s ballets, The Zephyrtine, and The Snowbears of Lake Louise, explore fantasy worlds while reinforcing the importance of cultural diversity and acceptance.

His distinctive sound has attracted numerous accolades, including Opera News giving
David's Excommunication Mass for orchestra, choir and soloists its Critics pick of the month. Chesky received nominations from the Independent Music Awards in 2017 & 2018 for his recordings of The Venetian Concertos, and The Spanish Poems. His comedic adult operas, La Farranucci, Juliet and Romeo, and The Pig, the Farmer, have left audiences in laughter-filled tears. Opera News praised that “Chesky could turn out to be a one-man Brecht-Weill for the twenty-first century.”

Internationally renowned, Chesky served as the Composer-in-Residence for the National Symphony of Taiwan and in 2023 will be the featured composer at the Dresden Festival with his White Rose Trilogy Oratorio. His children’s opera The Mice War has been performed in Poland at Teatr Muzyczny, and at The National Theater of Taiwan in Chinese to sold-out audiences. With such a positive response, the libretto has been translated into Polish, Italian and Portuguese, and the DVD received accolades at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Dallas Kid Film Festival, and the Madrid International Film Festival and since has been turned into a full length animated film.

Chesky is committed to fostering music education in young children, fully aware that our audiences tomorrow depend on introducing classical music to today’s youth. Consequently, Chesky created the album Classical Cats™, a fun, endearing story that gives children an introduction to the orchestra and classical music, awarded Dr. Toy’s Recognition of Excellence. The Mice War reached international acclaim as an opera and film, and his children’s ballet Zephyrtine was reviewed as “Intended for children but musically sophisticated…” (Fanfare Magazine). Chesky is also the author of The Snowbears of Lake Louise™, a book and audio book  that educates children about the importance of preserving the environment.

Miami native Chesky moved to New York in 1974 to officially begin his career as a musician. With an interest in both classical and jazz, he immediately began studying composition with Pulitzer Prize winner, David Del Tredici, and piano with John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. His blending of genres was first reflected in the culmination of his big band, The David Chesky Big Band, where he performed at every major jazz club and festival including The Village Vanguard, Storyville, and the Newport, JVC and Monterey Jazz Festivals. Still active as a jazz pianist today, Chesky plays and composes for his new group, Jazz in the New Harmonic, incorporating 12-tone and contemporary classical harmonies into jazz, and his Grammy-nominated Latin-jazz fusion, The Body Acoustic. David's latest jazz trio album is The Great European Songbook, in which he reharmonizes the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin and sets them into a jazz palette.

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Besides being a composer, David is a pioneer and respected worldwide leader in the field of audio technology. He is the founder of the audiophile label Chesky Records. Producing the highest quality of recordings available today, Chesky Records has produced over 500 albums with highly accomplished artists in genres spanning classical, jazz, and world music. David is at the forefront of audio technology, having created the world's first 128x oversampled recordings, 96kHz/24bit recordings, and created the 6.0 multichannel 192kHz/24bit DVD-Audio Disc layout. In 2007, he opened HDtracks.com, the world’s premier online download service that delivers high sound quality in AIFF, FLAC, and 192kHz/24bit high-resolution files. David's latest technology venture is The Audiophile Society where he is developing his own proprietary way to create 3D audio for two-channel audio system for a more immersive listening experience. Chesky currently resides in New York City with his wife, Brazilian actress Patricia Dinely and their two children, Lucca and Paloma, who is a young rising singer in the music industry.