Mr. David Shuler

Member

Biography

~~David Shuler was educated at the Eastman School of Music, Columbia University, and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.  He studied organ with David Craighead and Leonard Raver, and composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler and Gunther Schuller.  He has received numerous awards, including a BMI-SC award for composition and First Prize in the Mid-Hudson Valley Chapter American Guild of Organists Organ Playing Competition.

Mr. Shuler is presently Director of Music and Organist at the historic Church of Saint Luke in the Fields in New York City, where he oversees an extensive music program.  In addition to an active children’s choir program, a professional choir sings masses and motets from the fifteenth century to the present day at the principal services of the church throughout the year.  The choir is featured in an annual concert series of sacred music, and has made numerous recordings, including Refuge and Strength: Selections from the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer, released by Church Publishing, the publishing arm of the national Episcopal Church.

Prior to the appointment at St. Luke in the Fields, Mr. Shuler was the Director of Music at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut.  He has also held positions as Organist and Choirmaster at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City and Assistant Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  Mr. Shuler is also active as a synagogue musician and is the Music Director of the Dalton Chorale in Manhattan.

Mr. Shuler has been particularly active as a champion of contemporary music.  He has premiered organ works of Charles Wuorinen, William Albright, Ralph Shapey, Gunther Schuller, and Frank Retzel, among others.  Mr. Shuler received a National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commissioning Grant to commission works from Ralph Shapey, Charles Wuorinen, and Gunther Schuller as well as a grant from the Washington, D.C. American Guild of Organists Foundation for the promotion of contemporary music.  In addition, he has recorded the choral music of Frank Wigglesworth with the Choir of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields for CRI.  In 1998, Mr. Shuler received a grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Trust to record Responsoria by Richard Toensing with the Choir at St. Luke’s for the North/South Consonance label.

Mr. Shuler has been featured as an organ soloist on both the East and West coasts in productions of the ballet Voluntaries, Glen Tetley’s choreography of Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by the American Ballet Theatre and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Mr. Shuler is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, and was awarded the certificate at the age of 22, one of the youngest organists to achieve this distinction.  He has served on numerous AGO committees, both at the national and local levels, and was for seven years the Director of the National Examination Committee of the A.G.O.  He has recently completed terms as President of the Association of Anglican Musicians and President of the Anglican Musicians Foundation.