Dan Becker received his DMA in Composition from Yale University, where he also earned his MM and MMA degrees. His teachers included Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Poul Ruders, Louis Andriessen, and Terry Riley. Awards and grants include those from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Meet the Composer, the America Composers Forum, and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. His most recently completed work, an interactive piece for solo pianist and disklavier piano, was commissioned by Meet the Composer and premiered by Kathleen Supové in November 2004 and hailed by Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle as "a dynamic whirlwind of a piece". Scheduled for the 2005/06 season is a new work for the Paul Dresher Ensemble. In 2001, he joined the composition faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Music Center.
He is the founder and Artistic Director of the Common Sense Composers’ Collective, an eight-member SF-NYC based composers’ group which is committed to experimenting with the processes in which music is conceived, developed, and presented. Each year the eight composers of Common Sense seek out and collaborate with a different performing ensemble. Under the auspices of Common Sense, Dan has had the opportunity to collaborate with some of the most exciting performers and ensembles working in new music today, including the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the New Millennium Ensemble, Twisted Tutu, the Dogs of Desire Ensemble, the American Baroque period instrument ensemble, and New York’s Essential Music. Upcoming collaborations include those with Michelle Schumann of Austin’s Barbwire Music Project, and the ensemble Electra from Amsterdam – a project which marks their first Trans-Atlantic collaboration. A Compact Disc of the pieces resulting from their first project was released in 1997 by CRI on their acclaimed Emergency Music series; while a recent CD of works from their 1996 project with American Baroque was released in June, 2002 on the Santa Fe New Music label. This most recent disc, The Shock of the Old, received a Chamber Music America/WQXR 2003 record award. Their third CD, with the New Millennium Ensemble, will be released during the 2005/06 season.