David Burkhart has served as principal trumpet of the Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose, and Jerusalem symphonies, as well as the Santa Fe Opera. He has also been acting principal of the San Diego Symphony and the San Francisco Opera. An honors graduate of Yale, he taught at Stanford for ten years and currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory. Mr. Burkhart is a member of The Bay Brass and the San Francisco Brass Quintet, and performs regularly with the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. His teachers include Adolph Herseth, Arnold Jacobs, Robert Nagel, William Vacchiano, and Charles Geyer. Among his numerous recordings are three Grammy-Award-winning albums with the San Francisco Symphony, two albums with The Bay Brass, "Symphony at the Opera" with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, and "The Star Wars Trilogy" with John Williams. DVDs include the San Francisco Symphony's soon-to-be-released "Keeping Score: Mahler," and performances as principal trumpet with the San Francisco Opera in Mefistofele and Samson and Delilah.

For twenty years, Mr. Burkhart has also been a member of the small staff at San Francisco's renowned Anchor Brewing Company, brewers of Anchor Steam® Beer. His extensive research into the brewery's history -- available online at www.anchorbrewing.com -- fueled his passion for San Francisco history and for writing. His award-winning books include Earthquake Days: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake & Fire in 3-D, which received four major book awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award in History, the Independent Publisher Book Award in History, and the National Best Books Award in U.S. History; and Cocktail Boothby's American Bartender, which received two National Indie Excellence awards and two National Best Books Awards. His latest project, to be published in 2011, is Cocktails & Punches in Mark Twain's San Francisco.