David Chidsey is a guitarist /educator with a broad vision of musical concepts, ideas, and teaching philosophies.  At the age of 18 David was involved in a traumatic car accident that crushed his left hand and nearly ended his instrumental ambitions.  Determined to succeed, David rehabilitated his hand and entered a college music program at the Lawrence University Conservatory in Appleton WI where he studied classical guitar performance. 
After graduating from the conservatory, David earned an MM in guitar performance from the UW-Madison where he taught guitar as an assistant to Javier Calderon.

David is now studying music pedagogy at Columbia University in New York City. In New York, David has worked with renowned guitarist Dominic Frasca to develop an innovative approach to guitar concert programming involving repertoire, pedagogy and multi-media presentations.  He is an instructor of Applied Guitar at Teachers College, and has served as an adjunct instructor of Jazz Studies at the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

David has participated in many prestigious music programs including the Aspen Summer Music School, where he studied with the famed Sharon Isbin of the Juilliard School, and in Vienna, Austria, as well as the Stetson International Guitar Workshop, National Guitar Summer Workshop, and Guitare Lachine. David has participated in masterclasses with Paul Galbraith, Go Nagano, Judicael Perroy, Oscar Ghigllia, LAGQ, Antigoni Goni, Jason Vieaux, Lilly Afshar. At the 2005 National Guitar Summer Workshop, David was chosen from hundreds of guitarists as one of a select few to perform for the Paul Galbraith Masterclass.

David has organized a scholarship intended to help socio-economically disadvantaged students gain private music instruction. David has also performed for the Gunther Schuller Artist-in Residence concert series at UW-Madison as a featured performer for two of Mr. Schuller's Compositions (Variations on a theme of John Lewis and Abstraction). While living and studying in Europe, David was able to study with world class guitar pedagogues Zoran Dukic, and Brigitta Soos while studying abroad in a joint program with the Wiener Konservatorium.

In 2006, David's musical and teaching philosophies began to evolve. As a maturing artist/teacher, David wanted to focus more of his attention on his creative side as well as his deep interest and passion for pedagogy. David now concentrates on developing his constructivist teaching philosophies, inspired by great thinkers and philosophers of education, and is spending more time on developing innovative, pedagogy based performance programs that incorporate his ideas on creativity, composition and cosmopolitanism in music education. If you would like to learn more, please feel free to explore this website further and email me with your questions/thoughts at teaching@davidchidsey.com

David has performed in the U.S., Canada, and Europe and has recently finished his first recording for which you can find info here: