David Bloom is a conductor equally at home in opera, new music, and orchestral music, noted for his “rockstar energy” (Urban Milwaukee) and “graceful sensitivity” (I Care If You Listen). He is founding Co-Artistic Director of Contemporaneous, a 23-member New York-based ensemble which he has led in performances, lauded as “ferocious and focused” (The New York Times). Also Co-Artistic Director of Present Music, he brings “breath-taking and inspired programming” (Shepherd Express) to Milwaukee’s long-running new music ensemble. Bloom dedicates his work to collaborating with artists and communities to inspire creativity, empathy, and inclusiveness.
He has conducted over 300 world premieres in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, MoMA, Walker Art Center, and Park Avenue Armory, working with such artists as the Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Crossing, David Byrne, James Darrah, Helga Davis, Kronos Quartet, Isabel Leonard, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Courtney Love, Kevin Newbury, NOW Ensemble, and Dawn Upshaw. Among the composers he has collaborated with are Donnacha Dennehy, Du Yun, Michael Gordon, Judd Greenstein, Nathalie Joachim, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli, Ellen Reid, and Julia Wolfe. His 2020 debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, String Orchestra of Brooklyn, and Eurasia Consort were cancelled due to the global health crisis.
Especially active as an opera conductor, among the productions Bloom has led are Opera Omaha’s production of Philip Glass’s Les enfants terribles, Beth Morrison Projects productions of Michael Gordon’s Acquanetta and Jeremy Schonfeld’s Iron & Coal, Next Generation, Matt Marks’ Mata Hari for PROTOTYPE Festival, Six.Twenty.Outrageous by Daniel Thomas Davis for the American Opera Project, numerous production for Experiments in Opera, and with Contemporaneous, Dylan Mattingly’s Stranger Love and Gabrielle Herbst’s Bodiless. In 2020, he will conduct Kamala Sankaram’s Miranda: The Steampunk Murder Mystery Opera for Tri-Cities Opera.
Along with composer Dylan Mattingly, Bloom co-founded Contemporaneous in 2010 and now leads the ensemble into its second decade, championing the most exciting music of our time. He has guided the organization in commissioning and developing many ambitious works, connecting innovative programming with new audiences. In 2019, along with violinist Eric Segnitz, Bloom was appointed Co-Artistic Director of Present Music, one of the nation’s original new music ensembles. His work enriches Milwaukee’s cultural landscape with the best local talent in new music along with national and international artists and composers.
He has recorded for the Sony Masterworks, Cantaloupe, New Amsterdam, Innova, Starkland, and Navona labels. He is co-host of Imagination Radio, a Contemporaneous podcast on the significance of music in our lives, and host of Creative Score Study, a webinar series hosted by Kaufman Music Center.
Bloom is Resident Conductor of activist orchestra The Dream Unfinished, conducting instructor at New York University, conductor for Carnegie Hall’s Music Educators Workshop, and conductor of new music youth orchestra, Face the Music. He launched the orchestra program at Special Music School High School, Kaufman Music Center’s public high school, which he conducted for four years. He has led residencies at such notable institutions as Princeton University, Mannes School of Music, City University of New York, Williams College, and his alma mater, Bard College.
