David Rotter asked me to write a bio for his website, but his life has been such a wild ride – from his rather feral childhood on – that it should all really be a freakin’ novel. So I’ll leave that for real writers and for interviewers to ask him about once he finally reaches the level of fame that his talent deserves.
Up to no good at the piano
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David's first Stratocaster
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The most important thing to know about David as a musician is that he does something truly incredible and unique. It’s not just that he always improvises to some degree, or plays fluidly and emotionally from the heart. That in itself is a potent blend seen in recent decades from brilliant musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Steve Vai, Carlos Santana, and a few jazz musicians. But David does something rarely seen since the likes of Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Liszt, and Chopin: he composes intricate one-off pieces of classical music on the spot – off the top of his head. David plays other genres too – blues, metal, psychedelic, rock, ambient – and plays other instruments – acoustic and electric guitar, synthesizer, and digital keyboards – all played masterfully with a diverse range of emotion and always with his own readily identifiable style. But I’m going to focus specifically on David’s classical piano music, because that’s the part that blows me away the most – particularly from a musician who never had the benefit/limitation of formal training and for whom sheet music is an unenticing foreign language.
David's mom
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David and brothers
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Flowing music
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Somewhere along the line, classical music performances became about learning to repetitively replicate a set of about 100 existing great compositions note-for-note, and classical composing devolved into an often laborious mental exercise – sometimes taking years – potentially culminating in a beautiful piece of music. With rare exceptions, though, everything in classical music today is planned and rehearsed. The idea of a musician suddenly creating a classical piece on the spot out of nowhere is nearly unheard of. I believe that that lack of spontaneity and surprise is a large part of why many today have come to view classical music as stale, boring, dead.
During the time of the previously mentioned greats of classical music, extemporaneous composing during a performance was not only done by, but expected of, the few who played in the great halls for large audiences and royalty. Listeners had the thrill – in real time – of hearing never-before-played classical pieces, some of which were never heard again except in that one special moment. Imagine the excitement of such an unpredictable performance, where you go twisting and turning though completely unfamiliar sonic territory as a participant in a once-in-a-millennium event. That wildness, that fresh vibrance, that breathing, pulsing life, is what I believe David Rotter brings to classical music.
Such a context is difficult to wrap one’s head around. Especially in our fragmented mid-2020s’ music landscape, we hear someone playing a song that we’ve never heard before, and we just assume (likely almost always correctly) that they took a period of time to write it (or learn it), and that they practiced it for days or weeks or months before we see or hear the actual performance. With David, the moment of performance may well be the first actual moment of composition: the music may be just as new to him in that instant as it is to you. I urge you to really try to absorb that fact as you listen to David’s music. Whether it’s an entirely new piece of music or something he’s played before, in whatever genre, David always pushes himself to play the music differently than it’s ever been heard – different leads and flourishes, different arrangements, merging it in the moment with other music or with wholly new creations. I’ll list a few pieces at the end of this bio that were composed on the spot.
Backstage at the Troubadour
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The RottMobile
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Anyway, a bit about David as a human: he is simultaneously very childlike and what one person described as a “very old soul.” The closest description of his personality that I can come up with is the film character “Beetlejuice” – complete lack of appropriateness or predictability, no social boundaries, very twisted humor, and a mile-a-minute stream-of-consciousness conversation style. His life has been as unpredictable as his music. Though he's mellowed in recent years and tamed the absolute chaotic insanity that used to be an everyday feature, spending time with him is still a bit like interacting with a really whacked out cartoon character. When I first got to know him, I came to realize from witnessing his behavior that some of the great composers of classical music – a music form that I had once seen as “stuffy” – might have been just as out of their minds as artists like Hendrix or Ozzy.
Music is a very spiritual thing for David – an infinitely reciprocal relationship in which God lets him play music, David plays it for God’s enjoyment, and God lets him play more music. I envision the purest music as something that plays eternally in the soul of the universe. I see David Rotter as one of the rare few able to tap directly into that source and pull a bit of it down to earth now and then for us to hear: the music often seems to play through him instead of being played by him.
I’ll end with this. To me, David Rotter is the coolest, most unique, alive, inspired, contradictory, vibrant, unpredictable, demented, spiritual, twisted, genuine, emotional, driven, purposeful creatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of calling friend. I believe him to be a genius on the level of the greatest classical composers who have ever lived, whether or not most people realize that yet. David creates a people's classical music – no pretense, no stodgy rules, no formal dress codes or barriers to entry, no stuffy snobs looking down their noses at you like you're something they wish they hadn't stepped in, no doctorate degree required to "correctly" appreciate it: just pure, beautiful, regal, freeform expression played through the soul of a complete freak of nature for the benefit of the majestic palace of your mind. If you agree with me that David Rotter is an absolute rarity that needs to be discovered, please do what you can to spread the word, or as David says, Rott the Nation!
– Rob Rafn
– Rob Rafn
This classical material was composed at the moment that David was playing it ...
... and for good measure, here's some non-classical music that David wrote either mostly or entirely at the moment he was playing it.
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