BIOGRAPHY
David Hattner is an American conductor, artistic leader, educator, and advocate for orchestral repertoire whose career has been distinguished by adventurous programming, collaborations with living composers, and the creation of innovative musical projects. Since 2008, he has served as Music Director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic, where his work has been distinguished by unusually broad repertoire, extensive commissioning, and sustained engagement with contemporary music.
Over the course of his tenure, Hattner has programmed more than 400 works by over 200 composers, encompassing the core orchestral canon, neglected masterworks, contemporary music, and a particularly strong commitment to American composers. His programming has resulted in approximately 45 commissioned works and more than 60 world, national, and regional premieres.
A defining feature of Hattner’s career has been his long-term commitment to living composers. He has collaborated with and championed the music of composers including Polina Nazaykinskaya, Jessica Meyer, Jeff Scott, Bruce Stark, Christopher Theofanidis, Kamyar Mohajer, Kareem Roustom, and Tomáš Svoboda. His work has led to commissions, premieres, recordings, repeat performances, and sustained artistic relationships that extend well beyond individual projects. In 2009, he founded Camerata PYP, a chamber orchestra devoted to repertoire and collaborations that might otherwise have little opportunity to be heard in Portland. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he conceived and directed the Portland Youth Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Commissioning Initiative, which generated more than thirty new works for young musicians.
“David is, quite simply, one of the finest conductors I know—technically extraordinary, deeply musical, and capable of drawing a remarkable sound from an orchestra. His precision as a conductor is formidable, but it always serves the music.”
— Polina Nazaykinskaya, composer
As a guest conductor, Hattner has appeared with the Oregon Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Baton Rouge Symphony, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Olympia Symphony, Oregon Mozart Players, International Contemporary Ensemble, Chamber Music Northwest, and other orchestras and ensembles. His collaborations have included projects with Imani Winds, Cappella Romana, pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner, and Pink Martini. The Chicago Tribune praised his conducting as “brilliant in all departments” and his programming as “especially attractive.”
Hattner’s artistic interests frequently extend beyond traditional concert presentation. In 2006, he conducted Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light in New York City, coordinating the live performance with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc without click tracks or synchronization technology. The New York Times described his conducting as “calmly authoritative.” He returned to the work in Portland in 2018. In 2023, he conducted Site Specific Dances in New York, reproducing in live performance the tempos of previously recorded performances and synchronizing the musicians with pre-edited video.
Hattner’s commercial recordings include the premiere recording of Tomáš Svoboda’s Symphony No. 2 and recordings of symphonic works by Polina Nazaykinskaya and Lera Auerbach. His advocacy for overlooked repertoire has also included sustained attention to composers such as Amy Beach and Ruth Gipps through performance, touring, recording, and digital media.
Beyond the concert hall, Hattner is an active musical communicator. His Conversations with the Conductor series, composer interviews, historical listening projects, and public presentations explore orchestral and chamber music, jazz, recording history, and popular music. These activities reflect a broader commitment to connecting audiences with music through historical context, close listening, and conversation.
A native of Toledo, Ohio, Hattner studied at Interlochen Arts Academy and Northwestern University, where he was a clarinet student of longtime Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinetist Robert Marcellus. He later studied conducting with David Zinman during three summers at the Aspen Music Festival.
