David Tanner
Region: Ontario
Professional Affiliations: Canadian Music Centre, SOCAN
Publishers: Canadian Music Centre
Organizational webpage: http://collections.cmccanada.org/final/Portal/Composer-Showcase.aspx?component=AAIL&record=b8e2c558-526b-4ce8-8065-bb59b6672304
David Tanner is best known as a saxophonist, having played professionally since the age of sixteen. He was born in England on July 27, 1950, to an English father and a Scandinavian-American mother. The family moved to Ottawa in 1953. Tanner began his professional training in 1968 in Boston, with a year of jazz studies at the Berklee College of Music. He then pursued more conventional studies at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1974 with a Mus. Bac. in composition and the prestigious William St. Clair Low Fellowship from CAPAC. He went on immediately to graduate studies at the University of Toronto, but quit after three months to try a stint with Lighthouse, which had been Canada's most popular rock band a couple of years before. The experience was disappointing, and Tanner left the band the next fall, returning to school half-time and beginning the eclectic freelance career which has been his mainstay ever since. He completed his Mus. M. in composition at the University of Toronto in 1977.
Most of Tanner's compositions are "accessible" works, aiming to catch the interest of a larger audience with some rhythmic fun, clear textures, short movements, and generally melodic character. Tonality is seldom entirely abandoned, but neither does the harmonic language follow traditional grammar. In the works composed before 1979 the language more closely resembles free atonality, without being strictly atonal; the more recent works are more clearly modal-tonal, but not confined by the rules of tonality. Even Tanner's earliest works show an awareness of performance considerations. Individual parts are always practicable, and characteristic for the instruments. He also makes an effort to create an interesting part for each performer in an ensemble.
Most of Tanner's professional activity is in playing, writing, and producing commercial music, but he also performs frequently with orchestras and new music ensembles, and teaches saxophone at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music. He only occasionally composes a new serious work.
Tanner married his wife, Susan, in 1978. Their only child, Sara, was born in 1985. Tanner quit playing and teaching in 1998 and retired to Northumberland County. Now he lives in Cobourg, ON. He did some arranging but did not compose anything new from 1989 to 2007. He then began composing again in 2007.
(Canadian Music Centre)
