From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall | Grammy-Winning Clarinetist David Singer’s Inspiring Journey
The Mike Litton Experience
Mike Litton
5.0 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Mike Litton Experience!
In this powerful and uplifting episode, host Mike Litton sits down with David Singer — world-renowned clarinetist, Grammy Award winner, former professor at Montclair State University, and author of the international award-winning memoir From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall.
David’s story is one of perseverance, passion, and purpose — from humble beginnings in California and driving a New York City cab to performing for two U.S. Presidents at the White House, playing with the legendary Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and standing center stage at Carnegie Hall.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
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How David turned adversity into artistry and found his purpose through music
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The secrets behind Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s “no-conductor” success and leadership lessons any team can use
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His transformative impact as a professor — inspiring students who thought classical music “wasn’t for them”
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The emotional and creative process of writing his award-winning autobiography
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The universal message behind his journey: If he can overcome life’s challenges, you can too.
About the Guest:
David Singer is a Grammy-winning clarinetist, international performer, and author of From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall, winner of the New York City Big Book Award for Autobiography. His work has been featured at Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the White House. His book is available worldwide on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and more.
Learn more: https://singerclarinet.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | That had to have been surreal, right? Like the end of your day, you're driving a cab in New York, |
| 0:05.4 | and you just been at the White House earlier that day. |
| 0:08.0 | Telling people, guess what I did today? Yeah. |
| 0:11.0 | And they, you know, it's funny, they got, they either laughed or they looked at their watch |
| 0:16.2 | and they looked around and they wanted to get out of there as fast as they could to get out of my cap. |
| 0:22.3 | The next year, we ended up in India. We were in India and that was when our embassy in Tehran |
| 0:28.9 | was overrun and we were in India. They had to sneak us out of town out of Calcutta in the |
| 0:35.4 | middle of the night. And fortunately, they had a plane for us and they flew us to Europe. |
| 0:42.0 | I mean, we had all kinds of, but so it's been quite a ride, you know. |
| 0:49.2 | So you sat in with the orchestra and the pit? |
| 0:53.1 | The Vienna Philharmonic, yeah. |
| 0:55.5 | You didn't play. |
| 0:57.2 | I didn't play. |
| 0:58.4 | But you were present. |
| 1:00.5 | But they give it to young music students who are talented, |
| 1:04.8 | and what it does is it really excites them in a way that, |
| 1:10.1 | because I wasn't that interested in classical music. So I auditioned |
| 1:14.8 | and then got in. And so I started making impressions on people who were big shots in the business |
| 1:21.4 | and ultimately performed and recorded with these people. They invited me to do all these things. |
| 1:29.0 | But it wasn't so easy because there were, when I graduated from Curtis, when I graduated from Curtis, |
| 1:37.8 | I had a piece of paper saying I could play the clarinet. Did you know there's a technology that's |
| 1:42.1 | actually an app on your phone that uses sound waves to tell your brain what you want your brain to do? |
... |
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