Here are some photos from a live performance, which incorporates music from the upcoming release
Prayer for Compassion
Click HERE to view a Quicktime Video from that performance
David
Darling's unconventional, playful teaching style has helped
open the world of music and improvisation to thousands
of people.
Darling is a classically trained cellist who began his career
as an elementary and secondary school teacher and conductor
of band and orchestra, specializing in cello and bass. He later
taught music and served as orchestra conductor and faculty
cellist
at Western Kentucky University. In 1969 he joined the Grammy
Award-winning Paul Winter Consort, an extraordinarily progressive
band for its time whose sound blended jazz with Brazilian,
African, Indian and other world music&emdash; and at times
even the voices of animals. During his eight-year stint as
soloist, composer
and vocalist with the Consort, Darling was immersed in ensemble
and solo improvisation. Since he left the Consort in 1978,
he has dedicated himself to a solo performing and recording
career,
and to teaching music and improvisation.
In 1986 he co-founded Music for
People, a non-profit educational network that teaches
and fosters improvisation as a means of creative self-expression.
Through Music for People workshops, trainings
and special events Darling has reached thousands of people.
For
the past ten years, Darling has worked for Young Audiences
Inc., a National Medal of the Arts award-winning organization
dedicated to enriching childrens' lives by providing in-school
programs in the form of classroom workshops, artists' residencies
and performance programs. David Darling was given the 1995
Artist of the Year award by the Board of Directors of Young
Audiences Inc. at their National Convention in recognition
of his hard work, innovations and creativity in the service
of arts-in-education. Also for children, Darling recently
contributed to the book Open Ears; Musical Adventures for
a New Generation
, acompilation of writings by diverse musicians including
Paul McCartney, Pete Seeger and Mickey Hart.
Darling has
collaborated on performances and recordings with more than
three dozen other musicians, among them: the Consort,
McFerrin, Spyro nGyra, Guthrie,
Kater and Nakai -- but also including Peter, Paul and Mary; Tai Ji master
Chungliang Al Huang; Oregon; Jan Garbarek; Dino Saluzzi;
Terje Rypdal; Steve Kuhn; Ketil
Bjornstad; the Nickolais-Louis Dance Theater, and the innovative dance ensemble,
Pilobolus. His collaboration with Nakai and Kater, an album entitled MIGRATION,
was named 1992 New Age Album of the Year by the National Association of Independent
Record Distributors (NAIRD). Darling contributed to the musical score of
German director Wim Wenders' film "Until the End of
the World" and was a featured
solo improvisor on the Wenders film "Far Away, So Close". Other
film credits include music for Jean-Luc Godard's classic "Nouvelle Vague",
and the 1996 movie "Heat". Darling's solo album, CELLO, was released
in September 1992 on the ECM label. It combines the spirit of slow, "Adagio" classical
music with the floating quality of Gregorian chant&emdash;played in the
multi-layered voices of acoustic and electric cello and enhanced with digital
delay and other
special electronic effects. PULSE magazine named CELLO one of the 10 best
contemporary instrumental albums of 1992. Darling recently played concerts
in Brazil, completed
a solo concert tour of Europe and a Scandinavian tour with the Sea Group
and a duo tour with Ketil Bjornstad to promote their new release THE RIVER.
