Member Profile

Composer and Conductor David P. Sartor (rhymes with “Carter”) is on the music faculties of Middle Tennessee State University and Trevecca Nazarene University, and is the founder and Music Director of Nashville's award-winning Parthenon Chamber Orchestra. His widely-performed compositions have been recognized with more than four dozen prestigious honors and awards that include the American Bandmasters Association's Ostwald Award for Symphonic Wind Ensemble Music, the National Fine Arts Award, a New Music for Young Ensembles composition prize, thirty-one ASCAP PLUS awards for compositions of unique prestige value, and a “highly commended” award in England’s Oare String Orchestra's Third Annual International Music for Strings Composition Contest. He was a Finalist in both the Columbia Symphony Orchestra’s American Composer Competition and the Fauxharmonic Orchestra's Adagio Composition Contest, First Prize Winner in the Burlington (VT) Chamber Orchestra’s Composer Competition, and First Prize Winner of the New Haven Oratorio Choir's Composition Contest. A ten-time honoree in the American Prizes, national awards celebrating American excellence in the arts, he is one of only five composers nationwide named as an "Honored Artist of the American Prize” in recognition of "sustained excellence" in the prestigious competitions.

A respected and in-demand guest conductor, composer and lecturer, Sartor's engagements include the Washington National Cathedral, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, the Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra, the Nashville Concerto Orchestra, the Nexus Chamber Orchestra, the Vanderbilt University Orchestra, Illinois State University, Middle Tennessee State University, Trevecca Nazarene University, the Knoxville Brass Choir, the University of Tennessee Brass Choir, the Dogwood Arts Festival Chamber Orchestra, and a conducting “mini-residency” at California State University sponsored by New York City’s Meet The Composer Foundation. He was a National Finalist for the 2020 American Prize in Orchestral Conducting, and has been inducted as a National Patron of Delta Omicron International Music Fraternity in recognition of his accomplishments as a conductor and composer, alongside notable individuals such as Samuel Barber, William Schuman and Robert Shaw.

Sartor received his education at the Blair School of Music, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory, the University of Tennessee, and Middle Tennessee State University. His additional conducting study includes private instruction with Karen Lynne Deal and workshops with Kenneth Schermerhorn, John Morris Russell and Diane Wittry. His works are recorded on the Naxos label and are published by E.C. Schirmer, Shawnee Press, and Metamorphic Music, and distributed worldwide by J. W. Pepper Music. A graduate of film scoring workshops with Steven Scott Smalley, Richard Glasser & Aaron Zigman, he has also scored a number of widely-distributed video documentaries and features.

Sartor resides in Middle Tennessee with his wife, the award-winning author Nancy Sartor.