David Fetter arranger

David Fetter
b. 1938

David Fetter taught trombone at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore from 1970 to 2016. Also a composer, arranger, and publisher, his career as trombonist included two years as Assistant Trombone in the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell and sixteen years, ten of them as Principal, in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Sergiu Comissiona and David Zinman. Guest conductors in Cleveland included Pierre Boulez, Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Istvan Kertesz, and Bernard Haitink. Fetter has also been a member of the San Antonio Symphony, The National Ballet Orchestra in Washington, D.C., the Radio/Telefis Eireann Symphony Orchestra in Dublin, Ireland, and the U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own.” He has performed chamber music with the Theater Chamber Players of Washington, D.C. under Leon Fleisher and early music with Musica Rara in Baltimore, and he has been a soloist with the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra, the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the U.S. Army Band.

Fetter holds a Bachelor of Music/Education degree with a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied trombone with Emory Remington and was a member of the Eastman Wind Ensemble under Frederick Fennell. Also, he holds a Master’s in musicology from the American University in Washington, D.C. He has conducted contemporary music and brass ensembles. His works have been recorded by leading soloists and are performed at colleges and universities and festivals in the U.S. and Europe.

At Eastman, Fetter studied conducting with Herman H. Genhart and composition with Thomas Canning. He has conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Brass Ensemble, ResMusic America, and the brass ensemble of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. He founded and directed the Baltimore Trombone Choir, which was active in the late 1970s, and more recently he was Conductor of the Ellicott City Trombone Choir. Both ensembles often performed his compositions and arrangements. He edited new works for trombone ensemble by composers Ross Lee Finney, Vladimir Ussachevsky, John Davison and Theodore Morrison.