David Teie is one of a third generation of musicians. He studied cello with Stephen Kates and Berl Senofsky at the Peabody Conservatory, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees and the Wertheimer award for cellists. He also studied with William Pleeth in London on a Fulbright scholarship. He joined the National Symphony in 1984 and has since played 19 concerto performances with the NSO, 12 of them with Music Director Mstislav Rostropovich conducting, including performances on three U.S. tours. He spent the 1999–2000 season as acting principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony. An active composer, Teie composed the string music for an album by Echobrain (founded by Jason Newsted, Metallica’s former bassist), the NSO commissioned and premiered his Fuga Eroica, and he performed his concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra with the Anchorage Symphony. His flute concerto was premiered in 2010 by the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, and he served as Music Director of that orchestra from 2013 to 2016. His research involving music and cognition has led to published articles in Biology Letters of the Royal Society and Applied Animal Behavior Science and a chapter in the Oxford University Press book Evolution of Emotional Communication that contains the only comprehensive theory of the origins and affective processes of music that has passed peer review. His research led to invitations to speak at the 11th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition and at the Washington Academy of Sciences. His species-specific music was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology Auditory Cognition Neuroscience. Teie recently signed an artist agreement with Universal Records, making MusicforCats the first music for any species other than human to be available from a major record company.
