Dave Roth '85
Pianist and Educator
Hometown: Allentown, PA
Dave Roth ’85 enjoys the process of making music. With jazz, musicians work long, long hours on various elements so that when they are performing, those elements come out without thought, explains Roth. “It’s the same as you and I having a conversation,” Roth says. “Live jazz is about having a conversation with the audience, and the performances change with the audience, the room, and the musicians. I love that.”
Roth, a 1985 graduate of Moravian College’s music program, has worked very hard to make that conversation as natural and commonplace as washing the dishes. “When I was younger, the performance was everything, and I’d become neurotic,” he says. “It is exciting, but I’ve worked to make it natural—then it really becomes a great joy.”
Roth, also an educator, enjoys the process of teaching and has been an artist/lecturer at Moravian College since 2000, instructing music majors and nonmajors in jazz and classical piano. His goal is to take students from where they are to where they want to be. Spending an hour a week one-on-one with students, Roth gets to know them very well. “All their abilities and all the things holding them back are right there in plain view; I have to build trust, so I can tell them what they need to fix and warn them that it’s gonna hurt,” Roth says.
“I help them learn about themselves so they can progress,” Roth adds. “And I believe it’s important to teach students how to think, not what to think.”
“Live jazz is about having a conversation with the audience, and the performances change with the audience,
the room, and the musicians. I love that.”
Roth’s dedication to music and education has led to many achievements. Among them, he developed the alliance between the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) and the International Association for Jazz Education. He conceived and coauthored MTNA’s Jazz Studies Guide—the best-selling education guide in the history of the MTNA. He also conceived and helped develop the Moravian College Summer Youth Camp for students in grades 8 through 12. And he is the president of the Pennsylvania Jazz Collective.
Roth performs regularly and has played with many well-known jazz musicians, including Paul Rostock, Larry McKenna, and Warren Vache Jr.