David Ward-Steinman, Adjunct Professor of Music at Indiana University-Bloomington, is also Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus and former Composer-in-Residence at San Diego State University where he directed the Comprehensive Musicianship Program, New Music Ensembles, and taught composition. He has received many national and state awards for his compositions and teaching, including the Bearns Prize from Columbia University; four BMI-SCA awards; First prize in Phi Mu Alpha, SAI, and National Federation of Music Clubs composition contests; the Dohnanyi Citation and Outstanding Alumnus of the Year awards from Florida State University; the Outstanding Professor Award from the Trustees of the California State Universities and Colleges; and was a White House reception honoree.

Commissions include those from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Joffrey Ballet, San Diego Ballet, California Ballet, Music Teachers National Association, National Associations of College Wind Ensemble, San Diego State University, and recently the San Diego Symphony, which commissioned works for both the 2000-1 and 2001-2 seasons that were premiered under the baton of Jung-Ho Pak. Other orchestral works have been performed by the Japan Philharmonic, New Orleans Philharmonic , San Diego Symphony, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra USA, Seattle Symphony, City of London Sinfonia, Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, Brevard Festival Orchestra, Idyllwild Festival Orchestra, and others.

He has been a featured guest composer and lecturer at over 75 campuses here and abroad, with performances in over a dozen different countries. He is the author of Toward a Comparative Structural Theory of the Arts and over fifty published compositions, and co-author of the two volume Comparative Anthology of Musical Forms.

Ward-Steinman holds degrees from Florida State University (BM cum laude) and the University of Illinois (MM and DMA), and was awarded the Kinley Memorial Fellowship from UI and foreign study. He has also been a post-doctoral Fellow at Princeton, a Fulbright Senior Scholar to Australia and New Zealand, and a composer at IRCAM in Paris. His teachers included his mother Daisy Ward-Steinman, John Boda (FSU), Burrill Phillips (UI), Darius Milhaud (Aspen), Milton Babbitt (Tanglewood), Nadia Boulanger (Paris), and Edward Kilenyi (piano, FSU).

CD recordings of his music have been released on Harmonia Mundi, Fleur de Son Classics, Kleos Classics, and Camarada labels. And numerous LP recordings of his music (on CRI, Orion, Advance, Crystal, ASUC-SCI, Golden Crest, Columbia SP) are now out of print awaiting re-release of CD.