David Getz has been playing and composing music nearly his whole life. 

He has been teaching Orchestra at Morton High School, his alma mater, since 2012. He is also the conductor of the Central Illinois Youth Symphony.

He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Illinois Wesleyan University with a Bachelor’s in Music Education in 2012. In 2010 he was a winner of the IWU School of Music’s Concerto-Aria Competition and performed the 3rd movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Wesleyan Civic Orchestra. David has always had a strong passion for composing and arranging.  At IWU, he premiered several of his original works in student composition recitals.  

As a professional conductor and composer since 2012, David has premiered several new works and regularly arranges songs for his school’s orchestra based on their musical tastes and skill level.  He has also premiered original works with the Central Illinois Concert Orchestra. In May of 2015, his String Quartet No. 1 was premiered by the Boston String Quartet.  He started the after-school group, “The Composers’ Guild,” in 2012 for students interested in learning how to compose and notate their own music.  David has spoken at several conferences about the development of this group, and he published a book on the topic, Unlocking Student Creativity through Composition, in the Spring of 2023.

David began writing Ruth: The Musical in November of 2011. After performing in a community theater production of Alan Menken’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 2017, David was truly inspired to finish his musical.  For the next year, he made finishing Ruth his top priority, and the musical’s first draft was completed in March of 2018, three months before its world premiere in June.

David lives in Morton with his wife, Lauren. They have one son, Skye, and they are foster-parents to twins, Ally and Addy.