Meet the Musician: David Gordon

By Leilani Polk

Principal Trumpet of the Seattle Symphony David Gordon first picked up his instrument in third grade. Both parents were amateur musicians and he says he was fueled by tales of his dad’s trumpet-playing youth. The big turning point came when he was performing in the Rhode Island Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and studying under its then-Music Director (and renowned trumpet teacher), Nedo Pandolfi, who introduced Gordon to the world of orchestral music and large-scale classical symphonies. Meanwhile, playing in ensembles introduced him to recordings and musical heroes like Philip Smith, former Principal Trumpet of the New York Philharmonic. “The first time I heard his playing on record, there was something that struck my ears that was really different about it. And I thought, Wow, I want to do that when I grow up.”

By the time he was in high school, he was performing in Boston youth orchestras and had another formative experience during Mahler’s Second Symphony in the Symphony Hall in Boston. “That was really profound ... It was my first taste of playing in the majors, sitting in the same space as a great hallowed ensemble.”

Surprisingly, Gordon’s college degree is not in music. “My parents always used to tease me that if I wanted to play the trumpet for a living, I had to study something even more practically useless than trumpet playing. So I picked philosophy.” It wasn’t entirely useless, however. “Philosophy really is just the study of how to think critically. We’re never going to resolve the great questions of the world. It’s more about the process of how to investigate those questions.”

He won his first professional position before he even graduated and started directly after getting his degree as Principal Trumpet with the Charleston Symphony in South Carolina (1999–2002). He also began a summer gig performing with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra & Chorus in Chicago in 2000, which he continues to this day.

He started his tenure in Seattle in 2002. “I’d never been to Seattle when I auditioned. At a certain level in classical music, it’s sort of like professional sports; you go where you’re drafted. I just felt unbelievably lucky to wind up here.” His love of the city has grown over the years, and much of that is due to a populace that seems to care deeply and unreservedly about supporting the arts. “You can feel that enthusiasm from the community and from the audience.”

Gordon has become entrenched in some of the area’s most beloved pastimes: surfing and skiing, though the latter is much easier to navigate. “There’s a group of us in the orchestra that are pretty serious skiers and sometimes we’ll go on Thursdays between a dress rehearsal and a performance. Play a dress rehearsal in the morning, get a ‘pow’ day in the afternoon, come back and play a performance in the evening. We’re all sort of laughing and thinking we have the best job in the world.”

See Gordon take the soloist spotlight when he performs Bach’s 51st Cantata in the Vivaldi The Four Seasons program on May 1, 3 & 4, 2025.

David Gordon’s position is generously underwritten as the Boeing Company Principal Trumpet.