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UCLA Obituary: David Cloud

Carolyn Campbell (ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu) (310) 825-6540
For Immediate Use Saturday, September 05, 1998.

David Cloud, best remembered as a radio pioneer who raised the level of public awareness of the more challenging aspects of classical music through his broadcasts and interviews, died on August 27 after a long illness in Los Angeles. He was 60.

Cloud, a recording technician in UCLA’s Department of Music since 1981, first arrived in Los Angeles in 1961 following graduation from the University of Alabama where he received a masters degree in mathematics. After working in the late 60s for North American Aviation in the Electro Optical Laboratory, he was hired as a program director at KPFK radio in the early 70s, and later moved to KCRW, where he introduced audiences to a wide palette of musical offerings ranging from a complete broadcast of Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the "Seven Days" of Karlheinz Stockhausen. As a result, he helped put the focus on Southern California as a new mecca for new music. In the process of assembling his radio shows, Cloud amassed one of the largest private collections of nineteenth and twentieth-century recorded music, concentrating in later years on contemporary American music.

Beyond his encyclopedic knowledge of this repertoire, he conducted hundreds of taped interviews with living composers from Ned Rorem to John Cage. Through the medium of radio he rebuilt bridges to composers’ work and personalities. A number of those interviews, such as those with John Cage, extended over many years, creating a definitive portrait of each artist.

Throughout much of the tenure of Zubin Mehta and Carlo Maria Giulinii, Cloud co-engineered (with Ron Stryker) the Los Angeles Philharmonic syndicated concerts, lending his own magic to the Philharmonic’s unique sound. Cloud documented the emerging visibility of UCLA as a performance center through his concert recordings of faculty and student groups. As a lecturer, he trained students at UCLA in audio technology, a course that has produced many more offerings in the new field of digital media in sound. Many of his students now work in the broadcast and recording industry. The UCLA Department of Music will dedicate its first Philharmonia Orchestra concert on November 10 to his memory. For more information, contact the department at (310) 825-4761.

Cloud is survived by his sister, Diane Smith; brother-in-law Tim Smith; two nephews, Chris and Erin; and a niece, Susan, all of Georgetown, Texas.


Contact: Carolyn Campbell
Phone: (310) 825-6540
Email: ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu