Name: David Bertrand

I’m from… Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago

I started teaching music in… 2011

I started teaching at the Conservatory in… 2014

My inspiration: John Coltrane, John Ellis, Mark Turner, Tim Garland, The Lord Kitchener, The Mighty Shadow, Brother Resistance, Kelvin Mapp, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, A Tribe Called Quest, MF Doom, Busta Rhymes

Few people know that I… love to cook Afro Trinidadian food for large groups people (last time it was 45!!!) and that I started exercising as a teenage because I wanted to be Wolverine.

Education: The University of the West Indies – B.A., Literatures in English
Aaron Copland School of Music at CUNY Queens College – M.A., Jazz Performance

I play and teach: Flute, alto flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone and percussion

My other artistic/musical endeavors: I’m extremely grateful to play in a number of jazz and world music groups that focus on original compositions. This includes my own quartet where my writing focuses on integrating folkloric elements with modern Brooklyn-inspired jazz.

Biography: A graduate of the Aaron Copland School of Music, David Bertrand is a flutist/multi-reedist and composer active in the New York jazz scene. A sideman for a constantly expanding community of artists, he has performed throughout the Caribbean and the USA.

David also leads a group devoted to playing his original music, driven by an interest to find organic, personal intersections between modern jazz and the folkloric rhythms and song forms of his homeland, Trinidad & Tobago.Together, they have performed at Twins Jazz, the Cornelia Street Café, Soapbox Gallery, ShapeShifter Lab, Whynot Jazz Room, Nublu, Spectrum, Club Bonafide, Caffè Vivaldi and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music Concert Hall.

David was a regular guest musician for the Spring/Summer 2020 sessions of Meditating for Black Lives and in the same year, was invited by Downbeat Magazine to write the September 2020 editorial that focused on the impact of systemic racism within the jazz world.

He is a 2021 recipient of a City Artist Corp grant through the New York Foundation of the Arts and was invited to accompany speakers and presentations at the 2022 Mine Action symposium of the United Nations Mine Action Service.