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At Goldman, He’s David Solomon. At the Club, He’s D.J. D-Sol.
On a sunny afternoon in the Bahamas this month, dozens of beachgoers mingled and danced to a soundtrack mixed by a man using a Pioneer sound system on a platform at the local tiki bar.
Nothing was unusual about this island scene — except, perhaps, the disc jockey: David M. Solomon, the co-president of Goldman Sachs, possibly the most powerful investment bank in the world, was the man at the controls.
“Great fun this weekend spinning at Nipper’s in Great Guana Cay,” Mr. Solomon, 55, wrote in a recent Instagram post accompanying video of the performance under his stage name, D.J. D-Sol. “Beautiful day and fun crowd celebrating the 4th.”
Mr. Solomon was one of the two executives who succeeded Gary D. Cohn, who left Goldman last year to join the Trump administration as director of the National Economic Council. He is now a crucial player in the firm’s competitive upper ranks.
Affable, experienced and well liked by clients, Mr. Solomon has a leg up in the succession race whenever the bank’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, leaves — as, of course, does the other co-president, Harvey M. Schwartz, Goldman’s former chief financial officer.
Still, Mr. Solomon’s love of spinning music suggests a youthful, unguarded side that is rare in the wealthy, button-down world of high finance.
In recent years, he has performed regularly as a D.J., according to associates, mixing and tweaking electronic dance music for a live audience. It is the sort of pursuit that could inspire guffaws among the executive’s 50-something peers while appealing to a younger generation of Wall Street talent that rejects the industry’s staid culture.
Mr. Solomon’s hobby has become a more or less monthly gig, with recent stops in New York, Miami and the Bahamas, all noted on the Instagram page. (Among the Manhattan venues where he has spun, according to the page, are Beautique in East Midtown and The Whales on Clinton Street.)
“David’s always believed that having a wide range of outside interests leads to a balanced life and makes for a better career,” said Jake Siewert, a Goldman spokesman. “He’s preached that regularly to younger employees in the firm and tries to lead by example.”
Mr. Solomon led a study about improving the quality of life for Goldman’s junior bankers that resulted in new curbs on the hours they could work on weekends.
Shortly after The New York Times called, the Instagram page was made private.
But a roughly 30-second clip shot during the performance on July 4 depicts Mr. Solomon, wearing a baseball cap with headphones over it and a T-shirt bearing the name of Casamigos Tequila, adjusting the music as women in bikinis and shirtless men wearing board shorts dance on a deck below. Speakers blast music from the roof of the club, which was holding its weekly pig roast that day.
It appears that the sampling of music on the video — which Mr. Solomon promised in an Instagram post before the show would be "a great mix” — is a clip from a track that someone else recorded, possibly “Missing” by the group EDX.
Based on his social-media posts, Mr. Solomon wants to get more creative. In an April 11 post next to a picture of him in front of an elaborate indoor sound system, he writes: “Starting to play around with vinyl. Old school and lots to learn but very cool...” In the shot, he is dressed in black, except for a green wristwatch, and is surrounded by black-and-white photographs.
The performance at Nipper’s was not Mr. Solomon’s first outing in the Bahamas. In May, he posted a picture of himself spinning at the Baker’s Bay Ocean & Golf Club on Great Guana Cay with the caption “Rocking the Dune bar...”
Mr. Solomon has joined forces with some big names in the electronic-music business too. Earlier in the year, he performed several shows with the D.J. Liquid Todd, a SiriusXM radio personality. And Mr. Solomon’s Miami gig in March was part of the Paul Oakenfold Generations World Tour. Mr. Oakenfold, a Grammy-winning British D.J., helped popularize trance music in the 1990s.
Whatever Mr. Solomon’s Wall Street cohort thinks, his social-media followers seem to understand that spinning music means a lot to him. Responding to D-Sol’s teaser post about the July 4 gig, an Instagram friend named @willmcdonough wrote, “This should be the first line of your obituary in 50 years!!!!”
David Gelles contributed reporting.
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