David Carp:
CLASS OF 1953
Nottingham High SchoolClass of 1953
Syracuse, NY
David's Story
Moved down to Palm Springs from our former residence in Marin County, California with my late partner of 23 years in August 2000. Sadly, he passed away on Christmas Eve 2000 and I decided to stay, buying a small house in nearby Desert Hot Springs, and taking on a survival job in a nearby resort in order to pay the mortgage. Nearly 80 now and still working 5 days a week. In my highschool days I was not a jock and was not into sports, but I'm a different guy now, working out at a gym 3x/wk. I'm in great shape now and have built up some muscle and have the energy of a 50-year-old. At Nottingham, I was active in the Dramatics Club and a capella chorus. Attended Cornell University (B.A. Arts & Sciences, Class of "57) and then studied product design at the Institute of Design, Chicago but dropped out after a year, deciding it was definitely not what I wanted to do. If I had my way, I would have become a classical composer, but my father discouraged me from that, fearing that I would not be able to support myself in that career. So I caved in and became a social worker like my dad. I worked in that capacity in Providence, Boston, and later in San Francisco after I moved there in 1963. In 1967-68 I quit my social work job after saving enough to live for a year and worked full time on my Masters Degree in musical composition at San Francisco State University, finally obtaining my degree in 1973. In 1968, my woodwind quintet "Tesserae" won the Paul Masson Award for best student composition. I was too "chicken" to pursue a musical career, so I returned to my former position as a social worker, remaining there until I was fired for being too "slow"...Expand for more
in 1980. I had become totally discouraged with that job and was planning to quit shortly anyway, so I didn't bother to appeal. Instead, my partner and I started a small wholesale gift and import business, specializing in Asian, Mexican and European folkcraft. We had a great time, renting an office and warehouse in San Francisco and showing our products in gift shows all up and down the West Coast. However, business was slow. It was a recessionary period and the wrong time to start that kind of business, so we each had to resort to supplementing our income by taking on temporary
office jobs while trying to keep the business afloat. In 1990 we closed the business and I took on a series of non-music-related permanent jobs. I was intrigued by the new advances in digital technology and put together an electronic music studio in my home, learning to create my composition via a MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) system. I was able to convert a few of my earlier compositions into MIDI files to achieve a digital playback, and also to compose new works directly using this system.
Addendum 6/25/2021: Turned 85 last November and still going strong. I was fortunate enough to have received a grant to produce a professional performance and CD of my three String Quartets, which had been scheduled to be completed last year, when the COVID pandemic broke, causing the project to be put on hold. Now that the pandemic is subsiding and the participants, including yours truly, are all vaccinated, the project is back underway and should be completed by the end of the summer. I've added a photo of a proposed CD album cover that I designed.
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