David Spelman

David Spelman's career as an artistic director, guest curator and music advisor for international festivals has embraced jazz, rock, classical, avant garde, and world music, as well as spoken-word poetry and the visual arts. He is deeply committed to promoting our musical heritage as well as contemporary music, and has earned a reputation for innovative programming, cross-genre collaborations, and commissioning multi-media works. His projects have attracted the support of Apple Computer and The National Endowment for the Arts.
Since 1999, David has been the artistic director of the New York Guitar Festival, “a series that examines virtually every aspect of the guitar’s musical personality” (The New York Times). The Festival has presented many of the world’s most distinctive guitarists at Merkin Concert Hall, Joe’s Pub, Carnegie Hall, The 92nd Street Y, and the World Financial Center Winter Garden. Living Colour’s Vernon Reid described him as “an impresario of great passion, integrity, and openness,” and Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen said the festival is “about more than just guitars. Built on a firm foundation of roots and tradition, the architecture blossoms into an eclectic building that would have astounded Frank Lloyd Wright.”
Guitar Harvest, a two-CD set co-produced by David and WNYC’s John Schaefer in 2003, featured artists including Andy Summers, Bill Frisell, Vernon Reid, Ralph Towner, Henry Kaiser, and Alex de Grassi. Mojo gave it a four-star review, saying “This largely acoustic set is guaranteed to leave guitar buffs drooling,” while Total Guitar noted that “Not only does it feature some of the most astonishing guitar playing we’ve heard all year… but all proceeds go to buying guitars and guitar lessons for inner city kids.”
David has created a number concert tributes to landmark record albums. In 2004 he produced the Blood on the Tracks Project, a concert at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall celebrating the 30th anniversary of the classic Bob Dylan album. The event was broadcast live on WFUV and as a two-hour radio special, syndicated to over fifty NPR affiliates. His 2006 Nebraska Project, featured a wide range of performers, including Dan Zanes, Martha Wainwright, and Bruce Springsteen, and received extensive press coverage, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, Billboard, and Pitchfork. The concert was filmed, with Fugazi’s Brendan Canty directing, for future DVD release. In 2007 his two-night American Beauty Project included performances by Jay Farrar, The Holmes Brothers, Sex Mob, Jim Lauderdale, Ollabelle, Dar Williams, and the Klezmatics, drew capacity crowds at New York’s Winter Garden, has toured to several cities in North America, and in January 2009 had a repeat performance at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook series. In June 2009, he's producing a Neil Young tribute at Toronto's Massey Hall featuring Holly Cole, The Cowboy Junkies, Stevie Jackson (Belle and Sebastian), Harry Manx, Jason Collett (Broken Social Scene), Steven Page (Barenaked Ladies), The Bill Frisell Trio, Sarah Slean, Issa (formerly Jane Siberry), and many others.
In 2005 and 2006 David served as curator of Other Words/Other Worlds, a festival celebrating National Jazz and Poetry Month at Flushing Town Hall in Queens, New York. The festival featured workshops, film screenings, musical performances, and a 24-hour poetry jam session. Musicians who performed included Matthew Shipp, The Nat Jones Trio, Peter Apfelbaum, Chris Cheek, as well as local high-school jazz ensembles. Readings included local Spanish, Russian, Korean and Chinese poets, a second grade poetry club, and celebrated poets Everton Sylverton, Bob Holman, and Hal Sirowitz.
Since 2005 David has overseen the Wall-To-Wall Guitar Festival at the University of Illinois’ Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and in the summer of 2007 he served as artistic advisor to a new guitar festival presented by Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. He is also the artistic advisor and international program consultant for the Adelaide International Guitar Festival in Australia. The AIGF debuted in November 2007, and the Adelaide Advertiser wrote that “never before have we had a festival like this… the Guitar Festival was a roaring success and an unqualified winner.” Rolling Stone magazine called it “a genuinely international event.” He is currently a Guest Curator for the Luminato Festival of Arts & Creativity in Toronto, where he is developing programming for Summer 2009.
In the early 1990’s David was the music director and co-producer of Third Friday Respite, a free monthly series of literary readings and classical music at Manhattan’s Church of the Advent Hope. Several highlights included a reading of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters as well as a year-long, complete reading of John Milton’s epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost. The series ran for several years and was recognized in feature articles in the New York Times, Daily News and other local publications.
In the 1980s David trained in acoustic guitar design and construction under luthier Jeff Trougott, and busked in the streets and subways of Europe. He later studied classical guitar at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and the New England Conservatory of Music, which in 2004, selected him as one of the one-hundred most distinguished alumni, as part of the Centenary Celebration of Jordan Concert Hall. In the 1990s he owned and managed a New York-based publicity firm, representing clients primarily in classical music, including The New York Philharmonic, The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, RCA/BMG Classics and Decca Records. He has served as a board member of The D’Addario Foundation for the Peforming Arts, The Naumberg Orchestral Concerts, and the Kaufman Center’s Lucy Moses School. David lives in Manhattan and Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
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“The sixth installment of the New York Guitar Festival turned the Big Apple into Guitartown, USA” -- Guitar Player Magazine
“[The New York Guitar Festival is] a comprehensive celebration of all things picked, plucked and strummed...a guitar hound’s paradise” Time Out New York –
“…an epic event.” -- The Wall Street Journal
“…a veritable guitar orgy.” -- Jazz Times
“The New York Guitar Festival has been fabulous! It's the guitar players club's annual meeting, a great celebration of the instrument and the musicians that have dedicated their lives to it. A great party!” -- Leny Kaye (Patti Smith Band)
“If you are interested in guitar at all then the New York Guitar Festival has to be on your itinerary. One of the most eclectic and _interesting guitarathons around, it is made by guitar players for guitar players. Covering the gamut from traditional classical repertoire to cutting edge guitar sound it is without peer in the field. Highly recommended. “—Andy Summers (The Police)
“The New York Guitar Festival has become one of the world’s top guitar festivals. Open to the various guitar styles of today, this shinning Festival functions as a great laboratory for musicians from all over the world to meet and exchange ideas enriching a whole new generation”. -- Sergio Assad (of the Grammy Award-winning Assad Duo)
“Where else could you find a program that features the very earliest guitar music through the latest in modern guitar music, with stops along the way in folk, Celtic, blues, flamenco and classical territory, all played by the instrument’s finest practitioners? I had as good a time listening as I did performing at the New York Guitar Festival, and am honored to have been included in this year’s lineup. The staff, crew and performers at this year’s festival were absolutely first-rate. Besides their professionalism they were all a total pleasure to get to know. Many, many thanks to everyone at the NYGF and my good friends at D’Addario for their outstanding work and nurturing of this most beautiful of musical instruments.” -- Ed Gerhard
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This and a few other myspace pages are maintained for David by a small team of helpful people. Due to the inconvenient fact of there being only 24 hours in a day, he’s not always able to answer all myspace messages. He does try to read all of them, eventually, though…
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