Faculty Member, College of Arts & Media
Assistant Professor
Music & Entertainment Industry Studies, Recording Arts
About
Musical Background for David J. Bondelevitch, MPSE, CAS
(full biography is further down this page)
David’s musical education began at age nine, when he took up the trumpet after seeing Louis Armstrong on television. Also in elementary school, he began teaching himself piano and took recorder lessons. By the time he reached high school in Swampscott, Massachusetts, David was playing lead trumpet and flugelhorn in the jazz, concert, and marching bands and attended several jazz camps. He also studied privately with Paul Fontaine (featured soloist with the Woody Herman band).
In his senior year, David participated in a special program that allowed him to teach brass and percussion full-time to elementary and junior high school students. He also sang bass in the school’s chorus. In addition, he was interim conductor of his high school jazz band while the director was on medical leave. Self-taught at music theory and arranging, he began arranging for the jazz and marching bands at his high school, as well as for his own small jazz group, which performed locally.
David is the only person ever to receive concurrent Bachelor’s degrees from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, matriculating at both schools in the same four-year period.
While at MIT, David studied music theory with John Oliver (conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus), piano with Marek Zebrowski (now director of the Polish Music Center at USC), and traditional composition with Ed Cohen (winner of numerous composition awards). David continued his private studies on trumpet with Charles Schlueter, principal trumpet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
David played with the MIT Symphony Orchestra (including a performance of the Persichetti Piano Concerto and Stravinsky’s Right of Spring at Carnegie Hall), the MIT Brass Ensemble, and lead trumpet for both the the MIT Concert Jazz Band and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble (directed by Herb Pomeroy). His performances with the Festival Jazz Ensemble included two awards for Outstanding Ensemble at the prestigious Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival. David also composed several pieces specifically for the Festival Jazz Ensemble. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Art & Design and a humanities concentration in music.
While at Berklee, he studied composition with legendary jazz educator Herb Pomeroy and played in his ensemble. David also studied composition with Phil Wilson (arranger for the Woody Herman and Buddy Rich bands) and Greg Hopkins (arranger for the Buddy Rich band). He also took several courses on film scoring. He received his Bachelor of Music degree in Composition and Arranging.
While in graduate school at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, David played principal trumpet with the USC Community Orchestra and also performed with the Dave Pier Big Band. David composed and performed the musical scores to a number of his student films, ranging in style from Dixieland to contemporary atonal.
After receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree, David became a music editor in the film and television industry, working with composers including Branford Marsalis, Randy Edelman, Mason Daring, Christopher Lennertz, David Kitay, Bennett Salvay, David Bell, Daniel Licht, David Schwartz, and Alan Williams.
David has performed with several choral groups, including the Burbank Chorale (the oldest performing group in California), and the Santa Clarita Master Chorale. He conducted choral sessions for films, including Black Knight, starring Martin Lawrence, and Tortilla Heaven, starring George Lopez. He has also had several compositions performed in films. He is a composer/publisher member of Broadcast Music, Inc.
While teaching at USC, David instituted semesterly meetings between the film and music programs in order to foster collaboration between the two schools. In addition, he instituted the first course in film music for aspiring filmmakers, Directing the Composer. He has also been interviewed along with composers Elmer Bernstein and David Raksin in Trojan Family Magazine. His musical analysis of the score to the film North by Northwest has been published on the web and is required reading at several universities. David also hosted the Film Music Network’s seminar on Music Editing in 2002.
David has credits on over 150 films and television shows. He won a Primetime Emmy in 2000 in the category of Sound Editing for a Movie for his work as Music Editor on the TNT original movie The Hunley (starring Armand Assante and Donald Sutherland). He has also won Motion Picture Sound Editor Golden Reel Awards for his work as a music editor on the ShowTime musical film Ruby’s (starring Angela Bassett) and the Imax documentary film Island of the Sharks. He has been nominated a total of twenty-one times.
He is Past President and lifetime Board Member of the Motion Picture Sound Editors, a society with a long history dedicated to recognizing excellence in the field of sound editing. He is Vice President of the Cinema Audio Society and former co-editor of the CAS Quarterly.
David is also a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the American Federation of Musicians (Local 47), the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Motion Picture Editor's Guild, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and Film Independent.
Full Biography for David J. Bondelevitch, MPSE, CAS
David Bondelevitch, MPSE, CAS, currently works as a freelance music & dialogue editor and re-recording mixer in Los Angeles. His most recent project was the Tim Allen feature film The Six Wives of Henry Lefay, to be released later this year. He also recently completed work on the Lifetime series State of Mind, starring Lily Taylor. He won a Primetime Emmy in 2000 in the category of Sound Editing for a Movie for his work as Music Editor on the TNT original movie The Hunley (starring Armand Assante and Donald Sutherland). He has also won Motion Picture Sound Editor Golden Reel Awards for his work as a music editor on the ShowTime musical film Ruby’s (starring Angela Bassett) and the IMAX documentary film Island of the Sharks. He has been nominated a total of twenty-one times.
David is an Assistant Professor in the Music & Entertainment Industry Studies Recording Arts Program at the University of Colorado, Denver's College of Arts & Media. He was also a faculty member at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts from spring of 1993 through 2008. He has taught Intermediate Production (310/508), Fundamentals of Cinematic Sound (242), Intermediate Sound (540) and Documentary Sound (547). He created the course Directing the Composer (473), the first course in the cinema program devoted to film music. He also created the first undergraduate non-major course on sound editing (340). He has also taught at Pasadena City College and guest lectured at the University of California Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount, Pasadena City College, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Columbia College Chicago, North Carolina School for the Arts, Chapman University, Savannah College of Art & Design, and Ithaca College.
He is Past President of the Motion Picture Sound Editors, a society with a long history dedicated to recognizing excellence in the field of sound editing. For over fifty years they have hosted the MPSE Golden Reel Awards. Under his guidance in 2004, for the first time the organization hosted a second event, this one at the historic Egyptian theater in Hollywood. Big Movie Sound was a sold-out event and was very well received by members of the entertainment community. In 2005, a follow up Foley Show was equally successful. In addition, under his presidency, a membership drive increased active membership by ten percent.
He is Vice President of the Cinema Audio Society and former co-editor of the CAS Quarterly.
David hosted the Film Music Network’s seminar on Music Editing in 2002. He was a featured speaker at the 2000 Audio Engineering Society Convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where he spoke about Multi-channel Mixing. He was also an invited speaker at the I/ITSEC conference. He has been interviewed along with composers Elmer Bernstein and David Raksin in Trojan Family Magazine.
His musical analysis of the score to the film North by Northwest has been published on the web. It is required reading at several universities. He has been quoted several times in Roger Ebert’s “Movie Answer Man” column.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied documentary filmmaking with Ricky Leacock, and he holds a separate Bachelor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied composition with Herb Pomeroy. He also holds a Master of Fine Arts in film production from USC.
Among the composers with whom David has worked are Randy Edelman, Branford Marsalis, Christopher Lennertz, Mason Daring, Stephen Barton, David Kitay, David Schwartz, Daniel Licht, and Alan Williams and David Bell.
David is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, the Motion Picture Editor's Guild, the American Federation of Musicians (Local 47), the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Film Independent, and BMI (Broadcast Music, Incorporated) as a writer/publisher.
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