Biography

Guest Chorus Director David J. Xiques is the former assistant director for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus where he also sang professionally as a member of AGMA from 1993–2022. He is professor of music at San Francisco State University and a former instructor at the Kodály Summer Certification Program at New York University. As an author and composer, his book Solfege and Sonority: Teaching Music Reading in the Choral Classroom is published by Oxford University Press, and his choral arrangements published by Alliance Music Publications.

Mr. Xiques has prepared the SF Symphony Chorus for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Orff’s Carmina burana, Handel’s Messiah, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Mozart’s Mass in C minor, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. He conducted the Chorus onstage in Davies Symphony Hall for the 2016 Día de los Muertos concert. He has prepared the Chorus for conductors including Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Paul McCreesh, John Adams, Ingo Metzmacher, Gemma New, Xian Zhang, Emil de Cou, Grant Gershon, Donato Cabrera, Daniel Stewart, and Christian Reif. His students from SFSU twice sang with the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra in performances of Holst’s The Planets and have joined the SF Symphony and Chorus in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.