David Sharma

Percussionist, producer and educator Dave Sharma has been programming and performing with Ableton Live since 2002. With a career as wide as it is deep, Dave’s work explores the intersections of percussion and electronics on stage, in the studio, in the theater and recently, in the classroom.

Dave was part of the seminal live electronic group Sub Swara, and percussionist/songwriter with NYC Disco stalwarts Escort, playing the Montreal Jazz Festival, Coachella, and Europe. He has performed on Broadway as part of the A.R. Rahman production Bombay Dreams, toured with Moby, and appeared on Late Night with David Letterman (with MNDR), and at the Chicago Symphony as a guest soloist. He's also DJ’d at dawn at Burning Man, taught for the Weill Institute at Carnegie Hall and created music for film, TV and theater productions – counting Hulu and the PICA’s TBA festival as clients.

After 17 years in NYC, Dave began teaching Performative Ethnomusicology and Songwriting in Ableton Live at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Houston, TX, where he chairs the Electives department. He also designed and began teaching "Remixing in Ableton Live," a certificate Capstone course at Houston Community College. He is passionate about bringing Ableton Live’s approachable paradigm of music-making to students, and using Ableton Live as a tool to solve problems and create musical opportunities.

Dave’s own musical happy place involves some combination of tabla, his RE-301 and Ableton Live with Push 2. He is available for group workshops, one-on-one lessons (in-person or Zoom), lectures or longer explorations in Ableton Live, Max for Live and Push 2.