David Cieri is a composer and musician who has, for the past twenty years, written scores for some of the best-known documentarians currently working, including the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Nottage and Tony Gerber, Erik and Christopher Ewers, and Barak Goodman, amongst many others. Cieri’s film-scoring work with Burns has been extensive, and includes The Vietnam War (with Yo-Yo Ma and Trent Reznor, 2017), The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014), The Address (2014), Prohibition (with Wynton Marsalis, 2011), Baseball: The Tenth Inning (2010), and the Emmy-winning National Parks (2008). In 2018, he wrote the score, which features guitarist Bill Frisell, for The Mayo Clinic, a film by Erik and Christopher Ewers. Cieri wrote music for Goodman’s Sundance-screened Oklahoma City (2017) and Emmy-nominated Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies (2015). In 2014, his original score for Raymond De Felitta's Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story was long-listed for an Oscar nomination, and in 2013 he had the good fortune to work with George Lucas, writing the score for The Heart of the Matter (2013), a short film for The Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to his film scoring work, Cieri has made nineteen stand-alone record releases of his music. These include the albums White Dust (2017) and Dark Furniture (2018), collaborations with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. A compilation of Cieri’s original score compositions for Burns’ Florentine Films, Notes From The Underscore, was released by Ropeadope Records in 2017. In 2016, David wrote Graves of Light, a tone poem for carillon bells which was performed by carillonneur Paige Breen and recorded on the bells at Yale’s Harkness Tower. Cieiri’s forthcoming live release, a full score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s silent film masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc will be released September, 2023 on Ropeadope Records in conjunction with John Schaefer and New Sounds WNYC.
He recently completed recording music for his second season of The Paris Review Podcast, as well as the score for a four-part documentary about genetics, The Gene: An Intimate History, as written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which came to PBS in 2020. Ken Burns continues to count Cieri as a critical collaborator, he is presently contributing music to forthcoming projects for Burns’ Florentine Films’ on Muhammed Ali, Ernest Hemingway, and Benjamin Franklin and Hiding in Plain Sight - a two part/4 episode look at mental health in America.
Cieri was born and raised in Philadelphia and New Jersey, his mother, a concert pianist and harpsichordist, introduced David to music and music making very early on. In his 20s, Cieri studied with pianist Art Lande, an influential pedagogue and ECM recording artist; toured throughout the States with Americana outfit, Chief Broom; and played a two year residency at Dulcineas, one of Denver’s premiere jazz clubs. Cieri has had the great good fortune to perform his music live at Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center, amongst other storied New York venues. For the past fourteen years, David has taught Music and Film and Film Scoring at The City College of New York.
