David Morrissey is a California native from Los Angeles. In 2008, he won the International Audition for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. He began playing the cello at the age of eight, and while in high school, started taking lessons with Ronald Leonard at the University of Southern California while enrolled in two high schools, Long Beach Polytechnic and The Orange County High School for the Arts. He received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, Bloomington, where he studied with Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi and Janos Starker, and his master’s degree in cello from Manhattan School of Music as a student of former Associate Principal Cellist of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Stepansky.
Morrissey continued his orchestral studies in Miami Beach, Florida, with the New World Symphony, an Orchestral Academy, under the musical direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. In 2001, the Leipziger Volkszeitung called him “a cellist with a bright future,” and his performance of the David Ott Double Cello Concerto with the Evansville Philharmonic in 2003 was praised by the Evansville Courier Press as “exemplifying the purest sound and musical taste.” His performances have taken him all over the U.S., as well as Rome, Montepulciano, Leipzig, Berlin, and Tokyo, just to name a few, and he is one of the founding members of the Young Janacek String Quartet. In 2017 he started instructing young cellists at the Phil Kids after school program. He also teaches his own students in his cello studio, and is a cello instructor at the Mount Royal Music Academy.
In his spare time Morrissey enjoys swimming and yoga-ing and he is an avid outdoor enthusiast with a passion for exploration. He spends his summers performing with the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and climbing 14ers (mountains that exceed the 14,000 ft mark).