David Buck has successfully balanced a career of conducting both symphony and opera in academic and in professional environments. He is currently Music Director of the Los Angeles Symphonic Camerata, a professional "ensemble in residence" at CSULA. From 1989 to 1996, Dr. Buck served the Guild Opera of Los Angeles as its music director and conductor. Dr. Buck has conducted more than 100 performances in the major opera facilities of the Los Angeles region. He has conducted in Europe and in Asia, and during the fall of 1991 he guest conducted in Taiwan under the auspices of the cultural division of the Taiwanese government.

In the fall of 1995 Maestro Daniel Barenboim, Music Director of the Deutsches Staatsoper "Unter den Linden" in Berlin, invited Dr. Buck to study the new Staatsoper production of  Götterdämmerung. Dr. Buck returned to Germany in the summer of 1996 as a special guest of Wolfgang Wagner to study Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger once again with Maestro Barenboim at the Bayreuth Festival.

Dr. Buck studied in 1968, and 1970 with Maestro Richard Lert in the American Symphony Orchestra League Conducting Institutes at Asilomar, California, and Orkney Springs, Virginia. He also has studied in the master classes of Herbert Blomstedt (1983, 84), Sir Georg Solti, and Otto Werner Mueller. He, himself, is an active teacher of conducting.

Dr. Buck is currently professor of music at California State University, Los Angeles, where he is the Director of Orchestral Studies. Dr. Buck completed his Bachelor of Music degree in violin performance at the University of the Pacific in 1966, studying under Ralph Matesky. He obtained his M.M. and D.M.A. degrees at the University of Washington, where his principal mentors were Stanley Chapple in conducting and Emanuel Zetlin in violin. During this period, Dr. Buck was a recipient of grants through the University of Washington from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation.

Office: KH C160C

Phone: 323.343.4060

Email: dbuck@calstatela.edu

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