Brent Michael Davids’ composer career spans 43 years, including awards from the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, ASCAP, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, In- Vision, Joffrey Ballet, Park City Film Music Festival, Emmy Award, Kronos Quartet, School for Advanced Research, Chanticleer, Meet-The- Composer, Miró Quartet, National Symphony Orchestra, Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and Jerome Foundation, among others. In 2015, the prestigious Indian Summer Festival awarded Davids its "Lifetime Achievement Award" in music.
Davids holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Music Composition from Northern Illinois University (1981) and Arizona State University (1992), respectively, trained at Redford’s Sundance Institute (1998), and in 2003 apprenticed with film composer Stephen Warbeck (Shakespeare In Love). He has garnered the Distinguished Alumni Awards from both of the universities he attended, NIU (1996) and ASU (2004). In 2011, Davids won a Silver Medal for “Excellence in Original Scoring” from the Park City Film Music Festival.
Many of Davids’ works employ traditional Native American instruments and often instruments of his own design, including a soprano and bass quartz crystal flute, and a dozen other percussion devices that chirp, coo, or whistle. With an expert hand, he inks performable music manuscripts that are visual works of art.
He has worked extensively in the choral field as well, often featured as a clinician for conventions, such as his work with Chanticleer at the 6th Annual World Choral Symposium held in Minneapolis (2003). In 2006, the NEA named Davids among the nation’s most celebrated choral composers in its project “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius,” along with Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Foster, and 25 others.