Aug. 8, 1946 — Feb. 1, 2025
David Shaw was born and raised in New York City with glorious summers on Fire Island, where, at 8 years old, he beat all the adults in chess on the beach.
He and a group of hooligans (some became somewhat famous) grew up playing jazz in David’s family home, David on piano and stand-up bass. After college, in the 1960s, he renovated, developed and managed the innovative theater space La Mama in NYC.
His associations with visual artists, dance companies and assorted theatrical people led him to Seattle in the 1970s with his first wife, Irene, and he became vice president of Cornish College of the Arts during the John Cage and Merce Cunningham years. He innovated business relationships to support the arts.
In the 1980s, he became the executive director of the Peter Britt Festivals in Jacksonville, where he grew the festival from an $80,000 annual classical festival into a nearly $1 million annual multi-performance venue including dance, blues, jazz and musical theater. He and his second wife, Mary, who worked with him at Britt, had their daughter, Miriam, in Ashland.
In the ’90s, he left the Britt and, with his third wife, Carolyn, started Artbeat Inc., and they developed Emigrant Lake into a summer performance venue (with B.B. King, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and more). They wrote a successful grant to Oregon Arts Commission and transformed the Old Ashland Armory from the old YMCA into a performance space and promoted events ranging from rock concerts to Tibetan Shadow Puppets. And their son, Elias, was born.
When the privately owned Mt. Ashland ski resort was failing financially, he spearheaded the fundraising efforts with Alan DeBoer, through local Rotary clubs, to buy the the resort and give to the city of Ashland to manage as a nonprofit. (He never skied, he just thought it was the right thing to do.)
He was then hired as executive director to supervise the construction of and manage the Everett, Washington, Performing Arts Center, where he fulfilled the 5% mandate for the arts by commissioning a Dale Chihully glass installation. At the grand-opening dinner, featuring Tony Bennett, Dale and David chose to leave the dinner to play croquet with the children on the lawn.
His next adventures included directing the Cazadero summer music camp in California, touring performances across the country and moving to Visalia, California, with his fourth wife, Darinka, a pediatric cardiologist. She kept his failing heart beating for many years until it ultimately stopped during an afternoon nap.
He felt that presenting cutting-edge performing art, especially to small, underserved communities, was his divine calling, and we heard the angels approved. However, he felt his greatest accomplishments were his children.
His three ex-wives joined Darinka in the Zoom service, attended by dozens of his family and friends, led by Rabbi David Zaslow of Ashland’s Havurah, and they thanked her for taking such good care of him for his last 20 years.
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