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            In 1982, after an injury ended a career as a modern dancer, David Kirtley focused on a new path as a self-taught composer. In 1987, he was awarded a residency/fellowship from the Yellowsprings Institute in Pennsylvania for his piece, Songs for the Outcasts of Great Turtle’s Back, a song cycle about the great human suffering brought on by the extreme losses of life, land, and culture endured by the Native Americans. For the next nine years Kirtley continued to compose while working as a waiter––and enjoying back-packing, botany, geology, and birding––in Yellowstone National Park. In time, urged on by a persistant feeling that formal training in composition would offer a necessary new direction, he enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he studied composition with Richard Toensing, John Drumheller, and Michael Theodore, earning a BA in music (1999), and a MM in composition (2001). He had additional studies in composition with Sydney Hodkinson at the Aspen Music School and Festival in the summers of 2001 and 2002.

Kirtley’s works have been performed at the 1998 World Shakuhachi Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Colorado Modern Music Festival (M2F), the 2004 NATS Convention in New Orleans, and at other venues in the U.S. and abroad.

In 2005, ERM Media awarded him a recording contract for his orchestra piece, Leaves falling from the Holy Tree; a work dedicated to the memory of Nicholas Black Elk, holy man of the Oglala Sioux. It was released in 2006 on volume 9 of the “Masterworks of the New Era” CD series, performed by the Kiev Philharmonic conducted by Robert Ian Winstin.

His one-act opera, In the Father’s Garden (libretto by brother, Mark Kirtley), was featured in New York City Opera’s “VOX 2007: Showcasing American Composers”. For this project, he received a generous grant from the American Music Center’s Composer Assistance Program.

Most recently, his piece for soprano, Pierrot ensemble, and percussion, I yell, the mountains echo, the stars are quiet (text by Mark Kirtley), won the commission prize in the Playground Ensemble’s 2010 Colorado Composers Concert (CoCoCo) competition. The Playground’s premiere of the commission will be in the spring of 2011.

A mountain hiker and wanderer, nature enthusiast, and world traveler, David Kirtley brings to his music a synthesis of Western classical music, sounds and impressions of nature, and elements drawn from classical and indigenous musical traditions from around the world. Born in Bardstown, Kentucky (1954), he currently resides in Colorado with his wife, Mutsumi Moteki.