• "David Froom's sonata is a charged and clangorous work, intensely dramatic yet deeply formal. . . It has a truculent romanticism and a hard passion, and made a strong first impression.  It will be good to hear it again."  Tim Page, The New York Times, October 1, 1985
• "It's a work that starts big, and stays big, almost without letup, throughout the excited first movement.  In the quiet, thoughtful second movement, dissonances are used in the service of exquisite feeling . . . The finale seems to be running as fast as it can, with a brief pause to hark back to the mood of the second movement before taking off again to a finish in climactic octaves, as if to recall the octaves with which the work began."  William Glackin, The Sacramento Bee, November 14, 1991
• ". . . a late entry in the century's long list of big, rhetorical, dissonant Statements for piano . . . Froom has an inventive mind and a complete compositional arsenal, fully deployed in this piece.  Scott Wheeler, Fanfare Magazine, March/April 1992

Piano Sonata 1

Piano Sonata 2

Composed in 2004, "Beneath the Azure Sky" is a setting in three movements of poetry by Afghan women. For many reasons, this poetry is deliberately anonymous and not written down: most Afghan women are illiterate, having been denied education by the society they live in. The poetry is often also startlingly intimate, revealing inner thoughts that would be deadly to express publicly; the poems are often addressed to lovers who would be killed if they were found out. The form of the poetry is called the landay, a very brief poetic form consisting of two verse lines of nine and thirteen syllables. I have chosen several different landays to knit together a narrative: the first movement is entitled Love, the second Separation, and the third Exile. The poetry became available to us through the courageous efforts of Afghan national poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, who surreptitiously collected them in oral interviews in Afghan refugee camps. Founder of the Afghan Information Center after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was assassinated in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988.

Beneath the Azure Sky - Marilyn Bliss

Composer's note, from helpsweb.free.fr

Excerpt - Nocturne for String Quartet; Spectrum Ensemble

• Commissioned by Laurel Zucker  
•  “a spell of introspective intensity . . . wonderfully concise and effective . . . [made its] points with quiet power.”  (Cecelia Porter, The Washington Post)

FroomWhistling_WindExcerpt.mp3

Commissioned by the Maryland State Music Teachers Association for Lucille Goeres.  Winner of the MTNA National Competition.

 “David Froom's "Lightscapes" was an involving study in contrasts for flute and piano.”  (Stephen Brookes, The Washington Post)

Excerpt - Goeres, Garth perf

Linda Larson, sopranoChris Trakas as Benjamin Button

Dominic Inferrera as young Benjamin Button

Last scene

Listening excerpt from Act I, Sc. 1, Birth

Listening excerpt from Act III - Benjamin Button at Yale