About David

David Ghesser was born in Tarzana, California in 1997, and from the young age of 2, from the comfort of his car seat, he could be heard wailing to Bocelli’s “Canto Della Terra.” From that moment, his parents had a premonition that something very interesting was brewing for young David.

It wasn’t until 7 years later, in 2006, when David first began taking piano lessons that his musical gifts would begin to surface. While David’s progress at the piano was quite evident, after 3 years of piano lessons, and countless classical piano performance competitions, David’s creativity began to see daylight as he began to improvise at the piano. David didn’t know it yet, but he would soon come to understand that his musical gift at composing was going to bring him far more joy than competing in piano competitions. Nevertheless, the piano is David’s instrument which he has mastered, and he would continue taking piano lessons for a total of 11 years.

At the age of 13, David’s music composition education began with private weekly 1 hour composition lessons with Prof. Liviu Marinescu, and that soon became 3-hour weekly lessons. David’s harmony, counterpoint and composition skills were improving steadily, but it was his creativity that was really showing signs of a soon to be bonifide composer of pop music.

In David’s senior year of high school, he had the opportunity to learn the jazz vocabulary and jazz improv from Mike Garson, the former musical director to David Bowie.  Among Mike’s 10,000+ students he’s taught over the years, he has placed David among his top 10 best students of all time, a distinction Garson has restated today, over 6 years after David’s last lesson with him.

After graduation from High school, David accepted a scholarship to attend UCLA where he majored in music composition. David always enjoyed writing contemporary classical music from the age of 13. However, when David began his studies at UCLA, he began to process the art of writing a melody. He soon found that writing melodies became his sweet spot as a composer, and he felt that composing melodies and working with talented lyricists would be the best way for David to help heal the soul and make people happy, the reasons why David composes the music he does.

When David was a junior at UCLA, he was named the inaugural recipient of the Brian Wilson Scholarship Award for Composition, Arrangement and Production of Popular Music. Professor David Leaf, who established the scholarship in honor of Brian and his late wife Eva, had met David in class, been impressed by his songs and compositions, and believed that David Ghesser would be the ideal choice for this initial recognition. With Brian Wilson in attendance, Professor Leaf hosted an event at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall in October 2019 to honor Ghesser.

Now that David is a proud graduate of UCLA's class of 2022, along with composing beautiful melodies, he's pursuing his musical career goal of entertaining audiences throughout the world. Nobody said this would be easy, but David is certainly ready for the challenge!