David Grandis
Conductor David Grandis is currently the Director of Orchestras at the College of William and Mary, Music Director of the Virginia Chamber Orchestra, and Music Director of the Williamsburg Youth Orchestra. Dr. Grandis’ guest conducting opportunities have included the Bordeaux National Symphony Orchestra, Toulouse’s Capitol National Orchestra, Nice Philharmonic Orchestra, Sofia New Symphony Orchestra, and Minsk Philharmonic Orchestra. He has regularly served as Assistant Conductor at the Lyon National Opera. Past positions as Assistant Conductor have also included: the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra in Maryland, the Capital City Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., the Baltimore Opera Company and the National Philharmonic, where he served as Cover Conductor. In 2021, he was awarded a conducting prize at the International Conductors Workshop and Competition in Atlanta.
A specialist of the French repertoire, David Grandis has established long relationships with prominent composers and their descendants; he recently completed research on the symphonic works of Max d’Ollone, contributed to restoring a lost score from Jean Françaix, and is currently developing several projects involving concerts and recordings of this repertoire for Naxos.
David Grandis has an equal interest in both symphonic and lyric literature. His doctoral thesis, A la recherche du chant perdu ©, analyzes the French style of opera singing and celebrates the era of the RTLN and its lyric company. It has been published in French and English. He has also studied voice for several years and performed roles in conservatory productions. Albert Lance invited him to conduct productions of Gounod’s Faust and Puccini’s Il Tabarro in France. Dr. Grandis recently conducted several performances of Puccini’s La Bohème with the Long Island Opera Company.
At William & Mary, David Grandis has taught orchestral conducting, music of the 19th century, orchestration, theory, and connection in the arts (an art history class establishing links between literature, fine arts, philosophy, and music from the Renaissance to the 20th century). He has developed the William & Mary Symphony Orchestra into a 95-member ensemble, and taken the students on domestic tours in New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., for side-by-side concerts with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and performing rare works such as George Bristow’s second symphony, “Jullian”, at the Kennedy Center in 2014. He took the orchestra to Paris, Vienna, and Prague for its international tours in 2017 and 2023. The ensemble has performed many challenging works from the core repertoire, such as symphonies by Brahms (2, 4), Tchaikovsky (4), Dvorák (3, 8, 9), Schumann (3, 4), Mendelssohn (3, 4, 5), Shostakovich (12), Vaughan-Willians (5), Saint-Saëns’ organ symphony, Beethoven (2, 4, 6, 9), tone poems by Strauss, Liszt, Rimsky-Korsakov, Fauré’s and Duruflé’s Requiem, and numerous rarely performed works by Lalo, d’Ollone, Rabaud, d’Indy, Caplet, Butterworth, Brumby, Glazunov, Borodin, Khatchaturian, Guridi, and Tomasi, to name a few. The WMSO was awarded the third prize in 2017 in the college division of The American Prize, and also the American Prize “special judges’ citation for exceptional orchestra of Non-Music Majors” in 2018.
David Grandis is the author of Les Bergers d’Arcadie, published by La Route de la Soie, Paris, in 2024. Previous works include Les trois regards d’Ulysse, 1999, and La sagesse de l’océan, 2004. He has served as Editor for the Journal of the International Conductors Guild since 2022.
A native of France, David Grandis completed his formal musical training in several conservatories and earned a B.M. in Musicology in France, a M.M. in conducting under Donald Schleicher at the University of Illinois in Champaign, a Graduate Performance Diploma under Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute, and a D.M.A. in conducting under James Smith at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has participated in several master classes with Marin Alsop, Gustav Meier, Rossen Milanov, Misha Kats, John Farrer, Daniel Lewis and Donald Thulean.
For further information, please contact:
David Grandis
708-717-6698