David Sievers is a Lecturer in Voice in the Department of Music at the University of Dayton, where he has taught since 2005. At UD, he teaches private voice, English and German diction and literature for singers, voice pedagogy, and other related courses. He also conducts the UD Opera Workshop annual productions including the upcoming Dido and Aeneas, The Sound of Music, The Magic Flute, Grease, Die Fledermaus, and Once Upon a Mattress. He also taught in Leipzig, Germany as part of a UD fully-integrated, interdisciplinary Summer Study Abroad program ("Faith, Music and Human Rights in Eastern Germany") in 2008, 2010, and 2013.
Dr. Sievers has been a member of NATS since 1997 and a member of Ohio NATS since 2006. He was awarded second place in the NATSAA competition at the state level and presented at national conferences for the National Opera Association and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, where his presentation on “The Semantics of Singing” was named one of the “Top 5 Must-Sees” of the 2021 conference. He was chaired the Opera Guild of Dayton’s High School Vocal Competition since 2016, and was a charter member of the Student NATS chapter at Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music.
An active tenor, Dr. Sievers has performed in recital in Italy and Germany, in the Midwest and in the Pacific Northwest, and has performed at the First Baptist Church of Kettering, St. George Episcopal Church, the Epiphany Players, Dayton Opera, Central State University, Wittenberg University, the Dayton Art Institute, the UD Opera Theater, IU Opera Theater, Bloomington Music Works, the Opera Theater and Music Festival of Lucca, Bloomington Early Music Festival, Spokane Opera, Washington East Opera, and Richland Light Opera. He has sung many of the character tenor roles in the lyric theater canon, ranging from NicelyNicely Johnson (Guys and Dolls) and Archibald Craven (The Secret Garden) to Dr. Caius (Falstaff), King Kaspar (Amahl and the Night Visitors) and the Emperor Altoum (Turandot). He has been the tenor soloist for symphonic works including Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, Haydn's The Creation, Rachmaninoff's Vespers, and Adolphus Hailstork's cantata I will lift up mine eyes.
Often a performer and proponent of new music, he performed “Too too solid flesh” from Joseph Summer’s opera Hamlet for the composer, selections from Jake Heggie's Friendly Persuasions during Heggie's residency at UD, Libby Larsen's My Antonia, a song cycle with texts by Willa Cather, at UD for the composer, and performed the world premiere of the song "When You Are Old and Gray" by the late Lucy Simon, the composer of the Broadway hit The Secret Garden.
Raised in Kennewick, Washington, Dr. Sievers holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Washington State University, a Master of Music degree from Boise State University, and the Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music where he studied with Paul Kiesgen and was an associate instructor, teaching voice and undergraduate vocal pedagogy. Former teachers include Gary Lakes and Winnifred Ringhoffer. A church musician since the age of 12, Dr. Sievers is the Pastoral Associate of Music and Liturgy at St. Luke Parish in Beavercreek, Ohio. As a representative of the state of Washington, he was a member of the National Catholic Honors Choir, and in 1998, sang as a guest soloist with the Carolina Catholic Chorale at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II.