San Francisco Classical Voice—
“David Conte doesn’t look like a sexagenarian, even though his seventh decade will begin on Dec. 20 and he’ll be publicly celebrating it with a Birthday Concert on Nov. 1 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he chairs the Composition Department.
Young at heart as he manifestly remains, Conte has credentialed connections to the past. He spent several years as one of the last students of the legendary Nadia Boulanger and then spent scholarly and personal time with Aaron Copland, who’d been a pupil of Boulanger a half-century earlier. Conte secured academic degrees from Bowling Green State University and Cornell University, before joining SFCM in 1985. He’s composed extensively for chorus, as well as for solo voice, opera, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and solo instruments. SFCV shared a lunch with him near his Corona Heights home before he took a sentimental journey to his original hometown of Cleveland.”