David Garner (composer)

David Ross Garner (born August 4, 1954) is an American composer of opera and vocal, instrumental, and chamber music. He is also an educator, on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Early life, education, and personal life David Garner was born in South Side, Chicago. He spent most of his childhood in Lincoln, Nebraska and Lake Oswego, Oregon upon his parents’ relocations for academic positions. He was given piano and cello lessons throughout his childhood and performed in recitals and with youth orchestras. Garner attended UCLA as a Classics major for two years before deciding that music was a better match. He left in 1974 and returned home to Oregon where he pursued music privately, playing blues, rock fusion, and classical piano while he prepared to audition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for the piano performance program. He was originally rejected from the program and spent six months as an adult extension student before auditioning again and being accepted in 1976. He remained in that position until 2000, when he elected to take a position in the Composition Department. He has remained in that position since and currently teaches composition to a sel