Composers
David Bontemps
-About
Composer and pianist David Bontemps is a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. As music lovers, his parents enrolled him early in private piano lessons. Later, most of his musical training was with the renowned pianist-composer Serge Villedrouin.
In 1998, he won a first medal at the Inter-Caribbean Piano Competition in Guadeloupe, awarded unanimously by the jury. Then in 2000, he gave his first recital in Port-au-Prince: Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Ravel, Rachmaninoff and Haitian composers Lamothe and Élie, along with his own compositions. In 2001, he won the bronze medal at the upper level of the National Piano Competition in Port-au-Prince.
Working mainly in the Americas' Francosphere, he has been praised as "a real hope for Creole music" (Yves Bernard ), as his compositions and multiple solo recordings have highlighted both his own compositions, his arrangements of Haiti folk melodies, and famous composers of Haiti. Most recently, he composed the opera La Flambeau on an eponymous drama by Haitian writer Faubert Bolivar.