David Shuler – Musical Director, was educated at the Eastman School of Music, Columbia University, and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.  He studied organ with David Craighead and Leonard Raver, and composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler and Gunther Schuller.  He has received numerous awards, including a BMI-SC award for composition and First Prize in the Mid-Hudson Valley Chapter American Guild of Organists Organ Playing Competition. 

Mr. Shuler has been Director of Music and Organist at the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields in New York City since 1988.  Prior to the appointment at St. Luke’s, Mr. Shuler was the Director of Music at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Stamford, Connecticut.  He has also held positions as Organist and Choirmaster at the Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City and Assistant Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  Mr. Shuler has also been active as a synagogue musician, presently holding the position of Organist and Choir Director for Congregation Habonim of New York City.  In addition, Mr. Shuler is the Music Director of the Dalton Alumni Chorale in Manhattan. 

In addition to a wide array of historically informed concerts of early music, Mr. Shuler has been particularly active as a champion of contemporary music.  He has premiered organ works of Charles Wuorinen, William Albright, Ralph Shapey, Gunther Schuller, and Frank Retzel, among others.  Mr. Shuler received a National Endowment for the Arts Consortium Commissioning Grant to commission works from Ralph Shapey, Charles Wuorinen, and Gunther Schuller as well as a grant from the Washington, D.C. American Guild of Organists Foundation for the promotion of contemporary music.  In addition, he has recorded the choral music of Frank Wigglesworth with the Choir of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields for CRI.  In 1998, Mr. Shuler received a grant from the Mary Flagler Cary Trust to record Responsoria by Richard Toensing with the Choir at St. Luke’s for the North/South Consonance label.

Mr. Shuler has been featured as an organ soloist on both the East and West coasts in productions of the ballet Voluntaries, Glen Tetley’s choreography of Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani by the American Ballet Theatre and the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Mr. Shuler is a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, and was awarded the certificate at the age of 22, one of the youngest organists to achieve this distinction.  He has served on numerous AGO committees, both at the national and local levels, and was for seven years the Director of the National Examination Committee of the A.G.O. He has also served as Director-at-Large of the Association of Anglican Musicians.