Dave Tarantino is a drummer and percussionist who has lived in Boston since the fall of 2008. One fateful evening during his junior year of high school he went to a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra with some of the cooler “music kids”, with which he was trying to fit in. Having almost no knowledge of classical music at the time, he did not think much when the first piece on the program read Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. After the opening trumpet notes, perhaps some of the most commercially famous in the repertoire, he recognized it immediately as the soundtrack from the movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey”. With the equally famous timpani solo afterwards, and the rest of the amazing concert by one of the world’s best orchestras, he was immediately hooked on classical music; and he has not looked back ever since.
After high school he went on to complete his bachelor’s degree at New England Conservatory where he studied with Will Hudgins of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has performed with many of the area’s orchestras including regularly with the Portland Symphony Orchestra and Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also recently a member of the percussion section of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2016 season where he worked regularly with famed music Director Zubin Mehta and performed in 9 different countries all around the world. Now that he is back in Boston, he is excited to continue his work with Phoenix of which he was a founding member. It excites him to be part of a team that is establishing a new generation of classical music in one of the liveliest cities for music in the world. Dave is currently in the middle of his studies towards a Doctorate of Musical Arts at Boston University where he also completed his master’s degree.