David Burger

Compositions: Tefillah

David Burger (b. 1950) is a composer whose works have been performed in Carnegie, Avery Fisher and Jordan Halls, in Europe and in Israel. He sang in the first concert on the newly liberated Mt. Scopus in 1967 and, two years later, began composing professionally for Richie Havens when he wrote the charts for Freedom from the movie Woodstock. Both of these events contributed to his musical sensibility.

Burger wrote and performed with a number of fusion bands in the 1970’s, during which time he studied under the major theorists Felix Salzer and Jacques Louis Monod and earned a Masters Degree in music theory from Queens College. He is known for his choral works, which have a particularly American vocabulary, most notably The Israel Trilogy (Hatikvah Hanoshanah, The Declaration of Independence of Israel and T’filah), and for many songs that express the emotional depth of American Jewry’s passion for Israel. He is the first person to have deduced and set the vocalizations of Psalms 151, 154 and 155 from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In recent years, Mr. Burger has orchestrated works by David Crosby, directed and written the scores for the film Dark Angel and for Birthright, a modern ballet by choreographer Sasha Spielvogel. Most recently, he has written and directed two musicals based on Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. He is the recipient of numerous awards, grants and commissions and his biography is found in Who’s Who in America and in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Mr. Burger lives and teaches in New York City.