DAVID PRATHER, dubbed “The Master of Merry” by the Los Angeles Times for his animated hosting of the annual Holiday Sing-Along is happy to be back for his seventh season. In addition to the holiday show, Prather has appeared on numerous occasions with the LA Phil as host and narrator. For eleven years he entertained family audiences at the Phil’s “Summer Sounds” at the Hollywood Bowl as Cap’n Dave.  Although he has appeared in Shakespeare at the Mark Taper Forum and Gilbert and Sullivan at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, most of Prather's work at the Music Center has been for the Education Division, creating and performing original assembly programs such as “Poetry Jam” and “Star-Spangled Poetry.”  He has toured these shows to schools throughout Los Angeles.  His anti-bullying assembly, “The Bully Dudes: And What to do About Them” has reached thousands of elementary school students. Prather has written and performed in original shows for the Getty (Imagining the Orient); the Alley Theatre of Houston (When Harlem Was in Vogue); the San Francisco Symphony, where he adapted and performed Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat; and an original work in which he portrayed the composer Charles Ives, Under the Concord Sky. As a boy, Prather was the treble soloist at the National Cathedral and sang in the world premiere of the opera Bomarzo by Ginastera, as well as Amahl and the Night Visitors by Menotti. Alas, his voice changed, and now he only sings in the shower. A graduate of Princeton University and American Conservatory Theatre, Prather lives in Burbank with his lovely wife and two talented children.