David Johnstone Creative Page

David Johnstone is considered one of the most creative and interesting string players in Spain today, combining a career as a wide-ranging cellist with composition. He displays a great versatility which enables him to work and participate as a cellist in many, and very varied musical activities.

He is the principal cellist of the Navarre Symphony Orchestra, and has worked with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Concert Orchestra, English String Orchestra and other British and Spanish orchestras.

He is a member of the trio B3 Classic (clarinet – cello – piano), a group with CDs recorded with Warner Music and nominated for the Spanish “Premios Nacionales de Msica”. As a performer he has been committed to contemporary musical creation, having premiered more than 30 works by over a dozen Navarre region composers and collaborates regularly with the Centro de Msica Contempornea Garaikideak' (Spanish contemporary music association) and in the ensemble ‘Espacios Tmbricos'.

As a composer he shows a tendency towards string instruments and lighter classical musical writing. He has some 60 original works published by the British publisher Creighton's Collection.

His successful web page johnstone-music is www.johnstone-music.com where one can see hundreds of his arrangements in downloads, especially for cellists. This activity has led to with special collaborations as composer-arranger-performer, such as with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfnica de Euskadi, Orquesta Sinfnica de Venezuela, Orchestre Nouvelle Generation de Montreal, the Gulbenkian Orchestra (Lisbon), Orchestra da Camera del Locarnese (Suiza), The Zagreb Soloists, the Saint Petersburg Musical Theatre "Zazerkalye" Chamber Orchestra, the Wroclaw Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum (Poland), Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra (New Zealand), Camerata Cambrensis (Basque country), Essener Philharmoniker (Germany), Ensemble Metamorphosis of Belgrade (Serbia), with Ara Malikian and the Non Profit Music Chamber Orchestra (Madrid), and a long etc. Currently, many courses, conservatoires and music schools, university String departments etc. use his repertoire; in fact, there are dozens of his arrangements on ‘You Tube' …


Updated:  July 8, 2017

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