David graduated from Lewis & Clark in 2014 as a Pamplin Fellow with a major in Music Composition and a minor in Russian Studies. After graduation, David worked at the nonprofit radio station, All Classical Portland, while also active as a music educator through Music Access Project Portland and Portland Youth Symphony.
In 2015, David began graduate study in musicology at Princeton University, where he is currently a PhD candidate. In addition to musicology, David is also engaged in the Slavic Department and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton. David’s research focuses on music, aesthetics, and religion in Late Imperial Russia, and his dissertation explores the role of music in negotiating meanings of Russian Orthodoxy between church, state, and intelligentsia in this period. David is also dedicated to performance and has worked with musicians both in Portland and in Princeton to stage works by the Russian émigré composer Arthur Lourié.
David’s work is based on archival research in Moscow, St. Petersburg, New York, Washington DC, and Basel, and he has received grants from the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies. He has also received a fellowship from the Fulbright Foundation to conduct research in St. Petersburg for the 2018-19 academic year.