David Hattner

David Hattner is an American conductor, artistic leader, educator, and advocate for orchestral repertoire whose career has been distinguished by adventurous programming, collaborations with living composers, and the creation of innovative musical projects. Since 2008, he has served as Music Director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic, where he has built one of the most ambitious and wide-ranging artistic programs in American youth orchestra music.

Over the course of his tenure, Hattner has programmed more than 400 works by over 200 composers, encompassing the core orchestral canon, neglected masterworks, contemporary music, and a particularly strong commitment to American composers. His programming has resulted in approximately 45 commissioned works and more than 60 world, national, and regional premieres.
A defining feature of Hattner’s career has been his long-term commitment to living composers. He has collaborated with and championed the music of composers including Polina Nazaykinskaya, Jessica Meyer, Jeff Scott, Bruce Stark, Christopher Theofanidis, Kamyar Mohajer, Kareem Roustom, and Tomáš Svoboda. His work has led to commissions, premieres, recordings, repeat performances, and sustained artistic relationships that extend well beyond individual projects.

In 2009, Hattner founded Camerata PYP, a chamber orchestra dedicated to repertoire and collaborations that would otherwise have little opportunity to be heard in Portland. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he conceived and directed the Portland Youth Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Commissioning Initiative, which generated more than thirty new works and provided creative opportunities for composers and young musicians during a period when traditional concert activity had largely ceased.

His artistic interests frequently extend beyond traditional concert presentation. In 2006 he conducted Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light in New York City, coordinating live performance with Carl Dreyer’s silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc without the aid of click tracks or synchronization technology. The New York Times praised the production and described his conducting as “calmly authoritative.” He returned to the project in Portland in 2018 and in 2023 conducted Site Specific Dances in New York City, leading performances that required the precise synchronization of live musicians, projected choreography, and pre-existing recorded material.

Hattner’s recordings include the premiere recording of Tomáš Svoboda’s Symphony No. 2 and commercially released recordings devoted to symphonic works by Polina Nazaykinskaya and Lera Auerbach. He has also championed overlooked repertoire by composers such as Amy Beach and Ruth Gipps through performance, touring, recording projects, and digital media.

Among his notable artistic projects are a multi-city collaboration with Imani Winds centered on American repertoire, including Amy Beach’s Gaelic Symphony; a continuing partnership with pianist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner that combines orchestral performance, chamber music, commentary, and audience engagement; and performances of Stravinsky and Bruckner with Cappella Romana. He has also maintained a long-standing collaborative relationship with Pink Martini, conducting approximately a dozen performances with the ensemble, including concerts with the Oregon Symphony.

Beyond the concert hall, Hattner is an active musical communicator whose Conversations with the Conductor series, composer interviews, historical listening projects, and public presentations explore orchestral music, chamber music, jazz, recording history, and popular music. His presentations on The Beatles have become a particular focus of this work and have been presented for audiences throughout Portland.
Under Hattner’s leadership, Portland Youth Philharmonic has developed one of the most successful digital platforms among American youth orchestras. The organization’s YouTube channel has accumulated more than 3.8 million views, including more than 1.1 million views for its educational Introduction to the Instruments of the Orchestra video.

A native of Toledo, Ohio, Hattner studied at Interlochen Arts Academy and Northwestern University, where he was a student of legendary Cleveland Orchestra principal clarinetist Robert Marcellus. He later studied conducting with David Zinman during three summers at the Aspen Music Festival.