Music Director

Born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., Dave graduated from Churchville-Chili High School in 1975. He was lead trumpet in both the orchestra and jazz bands and was a classmate of renowned soprano Renee Fleming. Dave graduated with honors in 1979 with a B.A. in English, Philosophy, and Secondary Education from the State University of New York at Geneseo. In college, he served as principal trumpet of the wind and jazz ensembles and studied with Eastman School of Music’s Jeff Tyzik, now Principal Pops Conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic. Dave taught high school English in western New York for a year before becoming a classical announcer and later Music Director of all-classical public station WXXI-FM in Rochester, N.Y. After more than ten years with WXXI, in 1990 Dave became Music Director of WMFE-FM where he has been sharing a love of classical music for nearly nineteen years.

Dave is the proud father of two sons, David and Daniel – both students at Stetson University in Deland, FL. Father considers both sons to be his magnum opuses.

Dave is now married to Margaret, catalog/metadata librarian at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. Annie holds a B.S. in Music, emphasis in composition from the Stetson School of Music and an MLIS from the University of South Florida.

Dave’s favorite composers are Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Dvorak, Mozart, Ravel, and Shostakovich. His favorite authors are Hardy, W. S. Merwin, Milton, Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, James Wright, and Richard Yates. Dave is passionate about live music making and attends as many concerts as possible. He loves to play chess, enjoys classic black-and-white movies, foreign film (especially French and Polish), and cheers on the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres, and Orlando Magic. His musical tastes are diverse, ranging from Americana to Blues to Bluegrass to Classical to Motown to Reggae to Rock to Soul. Among his favorite performers are Rory Block, Midori, Chanticleer, the Emerson String Quartet, Marvin Gaye, Valery Gergiev, Alison Krauss, Yo-Yo Ma, Bob Marley, U2, Alison Moorer, Murray Perahia, the Supremes, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.