Biography
David Schofield is a choral conductor, composer and organist who has been involved with church music and early music, both in New York and on the West Coast.
Schofield has served as Music Director at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco since 2005. At St. Francis, he leads congregational singing with the organ and conducts the choir for Sunday liturgies. He also directs Spiritual Concerts. These are events which combine sacred choral music with poetry, stories and sacred texts amplifying deep human themes such as love, death and spirit.
Choral
Schofield has lead both large chorus and orchestra and small schola in a wide range of repertory. He currently leads the St. Francis Choir in a largely a cappella sacred repertory including works by contemporary composers, arrangements of African-American spirituals and shape-note hymnody as well as renaissance Latin polyphony.
He founded the Notre Dame Choir, an ensemble of select singers at Columbia University in New York in 1985 and has conducted numerous concerts with this ensemble. In 1988 he was appointed Chaplain's Organist at Columbia University and Director of the Sacred Concerts, also at Columbia. He served as Music Director of the Ars Choralis Chorus and Orchestra from 1988-1990. He conducted the Schola Nova, a group dedicated to chant and organum from 1996-1999.
In 1999, he left New York to become the Director of Music and Liturgy at St. Dominic's Church and Music Director of the Arts at St. Dominic's concert series in San Francisco. At St. Dominic's he conducted the premiere of Spiritu Sancto by jazz musician Dmitri Matheny and recorded it for Papillon Records. He has recorded for Cathedral Records conducting the New York Madrigal Singers and for Globe Records with The Musicians of St. Dominic's.
Organ
Schofield has championed the music of Charles Tournemire, an impressionist who made a sizable contribution to organ literature but who has remained relatively obscure. He was invited to play Tournemire's music for the American Guild of Organists, and gave performances of Tournemire's oeuvres at Grace Cathedral and the National Shrine of St. Francis in San Francisco. His performances of Tournemire's seldom heard Sept Chorale-Poemes sur les Sept Paroles du Xrist at the Riverside Church and the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York received much acclaim. He is a gifted improviser and has given performances of improvisation many times at the Nightwatch and Vespers concerts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and at St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University. His Bach performances have been featured on National Public Radio.
Education
Dr. Schofield attended the Manhattan School of Music, l'Université de Paris, Sorbonne and the University of Cincinnati. He studied composition with Lukas Foss and John Corigliano, organ with John Walker and improvisation with McNeil Robinson.