Eric Culver grew up in a musical family in Rochester, New York. His parents were professional violinists and from an early age he witnessed that life from backstage. His father also had a healthy career in sound technology which eventually included sonar and radar, and the family moved to West Germany during the Cold War; that career flexibility was a very practical template, given the vagaries of the music business and the world of defense contracts. 

During high school, Eric studied piano (Vincent Lenti) and theory in the Eastman School Extension Division. But during Rochester Philharmonic rehearsals of Ives’ Fourth Symphony with Gunther Schuller, his parents were invited to Tanglewood to study. That serendipitous event opened up the intense BSO musical world; Eric successfully applied to New England Conservatory’s Composition Department.

At NEC his teachers included composers Frances Judd Cooke and Robert Cogan, and he began graduate classes in conducting with Richard Pittman, working as well with Schuller, Lorna Cooke DeVaron and Frank Battisti. An enthusiastic singer from a young age, he joined the NEC chorus, performing many times at Symphony Hall and recording on RCA and DG under Leinsdorf, Abbado, Davis and Ozawa.

Eric has been active as a composer, pianist and conductor at New Stagecraft Theater Company in New York City, Huntington Theater in Boston, A.R.T. in Cambridge and Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia. Over six years he made a dozen teaching and playing trips to the West Bank, playing continuo in concerts of Baroque Christmas music in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jericho, Jenin and Nablus with a group of teachers and advanced Palestinian student musicians.  He conducted “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “I Puritani” in Guatemala City, at the Universidad Francesco Marroquín. 

While teaching at College of the Holy Cross he wrote and performed a full score for Brecht’s “Caucasian Chalk Circle,” was for several summers Resident Composer for the Redfeather Shakespeare Company in Worcester’s Green Hill Park, and in 2018 wrote incidental music for Lope de Vega’s “Fuente Ovejuna.” Pre-lockdown, Eric served as music director for staged productions of “Grey Gardens” and “Little Women,” and is now in his fifth season conducting the Hanover Theater’s full “Nutcracker” in Worcester.

Eric is a photographer, and has documented concerts and theater productions inside and outdoors, beginning with a Ravi Shankar concert on Tri-X at 15; he has helped document the Concord Music Director search process with sound and image.