David Teie, Cello

David Teie comes from a family of three generations of professional musicians. He set aside early interests in composition and voice to concentrate on the cello. Mr. Teie studied with Stephen Kates and Berl Senofsky at the Peabody Conservatory, where he received his bachelor's and master's degrees, as well as the Wertheimer award for cellists. He also studied with William Pleeth in London on a Fulbright scholarship, as well as composition with John Corigliano. David Teie joined the National Symphony in 1984, eventually playing fifteen concerto performances with the orchestra, twelve with Maestro Mstislav Rostropovich conducting, including performances on two U.S. tours and the first of the American Residencies. He spent the 1999-2000 season as acting principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony.

Mr. Teie remains interested in composition and has written compositions for unusually diverse musical genres. He composed the string music for the CD by the rock group Echobrain founded by former Metallica bassist, Jason Newsted, was commissioned by Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony to write one of the Hechinger encores, Fuga Eroica, which received its premiere with the NSO in February of 2004, and in November of 2005 premiered his Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra with the Anchorage Symphony.

In 2005-2006, David Teie developed and outlined the first comprehensive theory that attempts to explain the cognitive processes involved in our appreciation of music. Working with Charles T. Snowdon at the University of Wisconsin, Mr. Teie and Dr. Snowdon studied the affect of David's species-specific music on cotton-topped tamarind monkeys, resulting in the first controlled study that demonstrated significant and appropriate responses to music from any species other than human. Mr. Teie is currently working with Jagmeet Kanwal at Georgetown University to see if combination sensitivity is involved in emotional response to music, as David's theory predicts.

David Teie serves on the faculties of George Mason University and the University of Maryland.