With successful concerts in music capitals from New York to Paris to Moscow, David Eaton has established a reputation as one of his generation’s most accomplished musicians. Since assuming the position of music director of the New York City Symphony in 1985, Dr. Eaton has been an active composer, arranger and producer in New York City. He also served as conductor of the Goldman Memorial Band and led that historic ensemble in its summer concert series in New York from 1998 to 2000. Additionally, he was the music director of the Hyo Jeong Youth Orchestra in South Korea from 2018 to 2024.
In addition to leading the New York City Symphony in its highly acclaimed Lincoln Center concert series at Alice Tully Hall, Mr. Eaton has conducted the orchestra and its chamber ensemble and brass choir in numerous concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Manhattan Center, Merkin Hall, Harlem’s Apollo Theater, the United Nations and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as concerts in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. After his Carnegie Hall debut in 1989, the New York Daily News hailed the New York City Symphony as “one of America’s finest orchestras.” He has subsequently appeared with the NYC Symphony at Carnegie Hall on several other occasions including a concert during Carnegie Hall’s Centennial Celebration in 1991.
Dr. Eaton made his professional conducting debut with the New York City Symphony Chamber Ensemble in 1977 and he conducted the ensemble in a program at the United Nations as part of the U.N.’s 50th Anniversary celebration honoring its Non-Governmental Organizations in 1999. He has returned to the U.N. to conduct the NYC Symphony in performances at the General Assembly Hall celebrating the U.N.’s 70th anniversary in 2015 and at the U.N.’s ECOSOC auditorium in 2026.
In 1988, he led the New York City Symphony on its first international tour, which included four concerts in Japan and seven performances at the Olympic Arts Festival in Seoul, Korea. The orchestra’s appearance at the Seoul Arts Center marked the first time that a Western Orchestra had performed at that venue. That same year Mr. Eaton and the NYC Symphony introduced New York audiences to the music of the Academy Award winning composer, Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) The concert, presented at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, featured four of Tan’s works including the world premieres of his Violin Concerto and Third Symphony.
Dr. Eaton made his European conducting in 1989 debut with L’Orchestra Symphonique Francias at the Flaine Summer Music Festival and made two subsequent appearances with that ensemble in Flaine and at the Salle Geveau in Paris. In 1991, he appeared as a guest conductor with the Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra in a program of music by American composers at the Kiev International Music Festival and was subsequently invited to conduct an all-Mozart program with the Neri Symphony Orchestra of Moscow at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory as part of the International Mozart Bicentennial Festival in Moscow in 1992.
Other guest conducting appearances include concerts with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony, the Les Amis Chamber Ensemble of Toronto, the Taipei City Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), the Orquestra Sinfonica Nacional de Guatemala, the Soo Won Symphony (Korea), the Asuncion National Symphony Orchestra (Paraguay), the Korean Modern Philharmonic Orchestra, the Gimpo Prime Orchestra (Korea), the Western Symphony Orchestra (Korea), the Goldman Memorial Band, the Metropolitan Repertory Ballet (New York), the Hanoi Philharmonic, members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Camerata Chamber Orchestra (Korea), the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan), the Belgrade Philharmonic (Serbia), the Sofia Philharmonic (Bulgaria), and the Chamber Players of the Americas (New York) at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Eaton studied at the Cleveland Music Settlement, Ohio State University and the Tanglewood Institute of Music. He has attended conducting master classes with Seiji Ozawa, Herbert von Karajan, Roger Norrington, Zubin Mehta, Gustav Meier and Gunther Herbig.
Composing & Arranging
In addition to his conducting career he has been a prolific composer, arranger and producer with 105 original compositions and 900 songs, transcriptions arrangements to his credit. Mr. Eaton was the lead orchestrator on American composer Kevin Pickard’s ballet score Shim Chung, The Blindman’s Daughter, which won the award for “Best Entry” in the 1988 Olympic Arts Festival in Seoul, Korea.
Two of his compositions, Fantasie for Violin, Cello, Piano and Strings and his Three Miniatures for Chamber Orchestra were premiered at Carnegie Hall by the New York City Symphony under his direction. His symphonic band work, Melavations was dedicated to and premiered by the Goldman Memorial Band at Lincoln Center. Another recent composition, Morning’s Calm for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra, was premiered at the United Nations as part of the International World Peace Assembly in 2001. His orchestral settings of Sephardic folk songs, The Alhambra Suite, received two performances by the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony in 2004 and 2005, and was also performed at the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival in 2005. In observance of the first anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, he was commissioned to compose music for the International and Interreligious Federation for World Peace Conference in New York in 2002. The resulting music, The Hope of All Ages featured narrated texts by world leaders in the realms of religion, diplomacy and human rights. This music received subsequent performances at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 2005 for the inaugural ceremony of the Universal Peace Federation, and at the United Nations’ Interfaith conference at the U.N.’s General Assembly in 2012. One of Mr. Eaton’s composition projects, the Cantata for Peace, Halelu---Songs of David, is a collaboration with Israeli vocalist, David D’Or. A recording of the Halelu cantata was produced in Tel Aviv in 2006 featuring the Ra’anana Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Chorus of Israel. Halelu received its world premiere performance in Belgrade, Serbia under Mr. Eaton’s direction in 2007 in a concert was televised to six other Eastern European countries. A second performance of Halelu took place with the Bulgaria Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. Excerpts of the Halelu cantata have been performed at the European Dance and Arts Festival-Salzburg (EDAS) in 2008, 2009 and 2012. Additionally, excerpts of the Halelu cantata have been performed by ensembles in London (2008), at the United Nations (2011 and 2012), in Viet Nam (2013), at Bard College (2014), in Vienna (2017) and in South Korea (2020).
In 2010 Mr. Eaton composed a suite for electric viola and orchestra for Alexander Mishnaevski, principal violist of the Detroit Symphony and a new arrangement for David D’Or’s appearance with the Israel Philharmonic. Mr. Eaton’s collaboration with Hip-Hop artist, Kenny Mohammed was featured as part of the History Channel’s People With Super Human Abilities, which was part of the History Channel’s 2010-2011 programming. The Kokolo String Ensemble and Kenny Muhammad performed Dr. Eaton’s piece Kenny’s Joy as part of the Brooklyn Museum’s “First Saturdays” concerts in 2011.
Two movements of his Juxtapositions for Electric Viola and Orchestra, Op. 42, were performed by members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2011 as part of the DSO’s “Baroque to Rock” concert. A second performance of Juxtapositions took place in September, 2011 at the Lexington (MI) Bach Festival under Mr. Eaton’s direction and he conducted a third performance with the DSO in 2012. His celebratory composition, Onward and Upward, was featured as part of the World Peace Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2019. Several of his recent orchestral compositions and arrangements have been performed by the Korean Modern Philharmonic Orchestra at music festivals in 2021 and 2023. Mr. Eaton has conducted several concerts with the Western Symphony in South Korea that featured Britain’s Got Talent award-winning vocalist, Paul Potts. The concerts featured the premieres of Mr. Eaton’s recent compositions Onward and Upward, (Op. 69) and The Grand Entrance, (Op. 70).
As an arranger/conductor/producer he worked with a wide array of artists including Gennifer Holliday, Philip Michael Thomas, Paul Sorvino, SONY Records’ Jazz artist, Richard Bona Mzuri Moyo Aimbaye, David Bratton, Aaron Rosand, Michala Petri and the Grammy-award winning band, Imagine Dragons for Saturday Night Live in 2014. In the recording studio he has produced numerous tracks for twenty-six album projects from 1993 to 2026. In 2022, Dr. Eaton published his first book, What Music Tells Me: Beauty Truth, Goodness and Our Cultural Inheritance.