Former DePauw Prof. David Ott Now Maestro of Florida's Panama City POPS

May 18, 2016

David Ott, who served on the DePauw University School of Music faculty from 1982 to 1998, is the new maestro of Florida's Panama City POPS and "brings with him a resume hard to match for an orchestra outside a major metro area," notes the Panama City News Herald.

Russell Roberts writes that "a successful conductor and composer decided to leave his university teaching post in search of a peaceful place to compose music. That musician was David Ott, who left his position as a music professor at DePauw University in Indiana and moved to Florida’s Emerald Coast."

Ott tells the newspaper, "I was looking for a place where I could do a lot of composing, and I came here to walk the beach and write music."

He continues to compose. "According to The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Ott has been 'cited as one of the greatest contributors to American symphonic music in the 1980s and 1990,' whose compositions are 'among the most frequently performed of any American composer since the 1940s.'" (at left: Professor Ott at DePauw in 1983)

You'll find the complete article at the newspaper's website.

David Ott has made a number of return visits to DePauw, and was composer-in-residence at the DePauw University School of Music in 2010. Read more here.