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David M. Arden (born September 6, 1949) is an American concert pianist whose performing and recording career has focused predominantly on contemporary and American classical repertoire, including premiere performances and first recordings of piano works by a number of notable contemporary composers, such as Henryk Górecki, Luciano Berio, Earle Brown, Carson Kievman and David Lang. The Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya named Arden's recording of her 12 Preludes for Piano as her preferred recording of that work.
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In addition to his performing career, Arden has been active as a music pedagogue, authoring the early-years piano instruction book Creative Music-Making at the Piano, establishing the New School of Piano in San Francisco, and founding Keys to Achievement Foundation, a nonprofit organization that places music keyboard instruction programs in US public schools.
Biography
David Arden was born in Los Angeles, California. He received early piano instruction from Arthur Frazer in San Diego. Arden went on to study with Aube Tzerko at UCLA (Los Angeles), Lucy Brown at Peabody Conservatory of Music (Baltimore), Frederic Gevers at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory (Antwerp, Belgium), and Aloys Kontarsky at the Cologne Musikhochschule (Cologne, Germany).
Arden received his Concert Diploma (Hoger Diploma) from the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in 1974 and subsequently won a number of awards: 1st place at the Tenuto-Young Virtuosos Competition (Brussels, Belgium); 1st place at the Gaudeamus International Competition for Interpreters of Contemporary Music (Rotterdam, the Netherlands); and the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (Darmstadt, Germany).
Arden has performed in concert and radio/TV broadcasts in Europe, the Far East and South Asia, South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the US. His commercial recordings have covered piano repertoire of George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, André Previn, Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, Galina Ustvolskaya, Luciano Berio, Earle Brown and Carson Kievman.
Arden was selected as a touring artist for the United States Information Agency’s Arts America Program from 1978 to 1981. He was also the recipient of a Meet The Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music Grant in 1997 (for a new work by David Lang) and an Asian Cultural Council’s Japan Fellowship Grant in 2001.
From 1981-1984, Arden served as the piano soloist for American Ballet Theater (New York), performing solo piano and concerto repertoire with the company on tour and at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.
In the area of music education, Arden was Visiting Professor of Piano at the University of California, San Diego from 1979-80 and then in 1985 founded the New School of Piano in San Francisco. He is the author of "Creative Music-Making at the Piano", an instructional book for preschool age children, and then adapted that pedagogical approach for use in the early-age keyboard instruction software series "Children’s Music Journey" (published by Adventus Interactive).
In 2000, Arden established Keys to Achievement Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing public schools, particularly those serving low-income populations, with a cost-efficient music keyboard instruction program.