Welcome David Zucchi

We are very happy to have David Zucchi playing our new SeaWind baritone saxophones. David has performed as a soloist and chamber musician at venues across the UK, Europe, and Canada, including Cadogan Hall, St. John’s Smith Square, the Royal Festival Hall, the Canadian Music Centre, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Canadian High Commission in London. He is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Music’s Artist Diploma program, where he studied with Kyle Horch and Martin Robertson (jazz) as an Edward and Helen Hague Scholar. Previously, David attended the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, where he studied saxophone with Wallace Halladay and composition with Alexander Rapoport. Upon graduating, he was awarded the William and Phyllis Waters Graduating Award, one of the Faculty’s top graduating prizes. David has participated in master classes with renowned soloists Arno Bornkamp, Timothy McAllister, and Marcus Weiss, and has attended the Universitée Européenne de Saxophone in Gap, France with the support of a David and Marcia Beach Summer Study Award.

With a keen interest in the performance of contemporary music, he has commissioned and premiered many works by emerging composers, and was selected to participate in the 2016 London Sinfonietta Academy. He worked closely with Canadian composer and songwriter Ross Koopmans on the staging of his multimedia work Braedalyn, which opened the Royal College of Music’s Great Exhibitionist series in March of 2016. David also performs with the London-based new music groups Echoshed and La Tache Ensemble. Dedicated to the promotion of Canadian music abroad, David recently curated “True North Sounds: A Canadian Music Celebration” with the Royal Overseas League; the event featured the UK premieres of a number of contemporary Canadian works. An active chamber musician, he recently joined the Abelia Saxophone Ensemble for a tour of Switzerland, and was awarded the RCM’s Woodwind Ensemble Prize (2016) with the Ono Saxophone Quartet. As a jazz saxophonist, David has performed extensively with the RCM Big Band, including a performance of Duke Ellington’s suite “Such Sweet Thunder” at the Southbank Centre as a part of the Shakespeare400 series.

David is the winner of numerous scholarships and awards, including the David and Marcia Beach Summer Study Award (2012, 2013), the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto Scholarship (2013), the William and Phyllis Waters Graduating Award from the University of Toronto (2014), and the Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award (2016).

David sent us a video recently of him performing on his new SeaWind bari, playing a classic composition by the great Duke Ellington: The Single Petal of a Rose.

Enjoy!