David Crane was Music Director of the Southwest Symphony Orchestra in Palos Heights from 1992 to 2024. His conducting career began as Music Director of the NIH Chamber Orchestra, Bethesda, MD. He was subsequently appointed Director of the New Music Ensemble at the University of Houston where he collaborated with the opera department in a production of Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel, programmed other early 20th century masterworks, and premiered faculty compositions. Upon receiving his Master’s Degree in Conducting from Northwestern University, he conducted the Northwestern University Summer Orchestra for four seasons.

In 2011, Crane founded the Chroma Chamber Orchestra, in residence at the Music Institute of Chicago in Evanston. Comprised of many CSO and Lyric Opera Orchestra members, CCO’s emphasis is the wealth of late romantic and early 20th century literature for chamber orchestra. Its concerts had the heading “Music, Art, Dance, Literature – A Multifaceted Concert Experience.” Reviewed by John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune, he wrote “…a cohesive and finely-disciplined group despite being just out of the starting gate…”

An advocate of using symphonic music as a vehicle for social justice, David Crane founded and was Music Director of the Metropolitan Arts Orchestra from 1994-1999, producing, procuring funding, and conducting benefit concerts for the Evanston Ecumenical Action Council, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and the Tri-Village and Northwest Suburban PADS. Guest conducting engagements include the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, Spokane Symphony Orchestra, Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra, Lawrence Conservatory Wind Ensemble, and on four occasions the Lublin Philharmonic Orchestra in Poland. As a free-lance trumpeter in Washington D.C., he substituted and played extra with the National Symphony.

The son of a foreign-service officer, Crane spent much of his youth in Munich, Germany and Nagoya and Tokyo, Japan.