David Edwards (9)

American singer, songwriter, photographer, composer and designer (film, ballet, theater), born April 28, 1954. David Noel Edwards began his musical career at the age of four, singing improvised alto parts in church vocal groups. From infancy, his exposure to classical music had come from hearing his mother conduct her weekly choir rehearsals. Church vocal groups wanted bassists, so he improvised on a double bass he discovered in a choir room closet. His first serious musical compositions were the pop songs that filled three albums on major record labels of the early 1980s. A bit of airplay helped send his “power pop” band on tours of North America and Great Britain, where he opened for Cliff Richard and U2 at the Greenbelt festival. But orchestral music was his first love, and to this he returned in 2007 when he audited Tanglewood Music Center’s composition program while writing the score for a new ballet production of Dracula, which premiered in 2008 at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Music for Carl Sprague’s film, “Summer,” followed, and in 2010 he began working with playwright Juliane Hiam, scoring “Clara and Claire” (in which he also acted) and the 2011 Metropolitan Playhouse production of Hiam’s “Belle of the Books.”