David Gopoian is a singer-songwriter, jazz musician ....

David Gopoian is a singer-songwriter, jazz musician, and composer from New Jersey. He started picking out songs at the piano when he was about five and started lessons at six. When he was in third grade, his original melody was selected from among his classmates’ to be performed by an ensemble consisting of some 70 odd eight-year-olds playing plastic recorders. An auspicious start for a budding young songwriter.

n high school David turned to jazz, following the usual course: music camp, jazz ensemble, basement jams, party gigs, and soaking up records.  After graduation, he attended Rutgers and William Paterson College where he majored in jazz piano under the able mentorship of Kenny Barron, Harold Mayburn, Rufus Reid, and Norman Simmons, among others. It was there he met many of the musicians who perform on his new CD “Sleeping in a Tree.”

Over the years David became increasingly drawn to singing and songwriting. He notes that some of his earliest memories are of family and friends gathered to sing, his father at the piano, sight reading from Great Songs of the 60s. At first singing only in private, eventually he started attending open-mics in the city, where he earned a reputation among fellow vocalists as an ace scat singer. Meanwhile, he wrote songs in his spare time and honed his craft.


While his new CD is eclectic – there are elements of blues, country, folk, R&B, and even some cabaret – it is fundamentally a jazz album. A spirit of spontaneity and improvisation pervades. The lyrics draw liberally from the world of dream and romance and playfully beckon the listener to join that world for a while.