Originally from a small town in rural North Carolina, composer Daniel Thomas Davis (b. 1981) now divides his time between Brooklyn, NY and London. Hailed by USA Today as “versatile – driven by an endless curiosity and the equally expansive energy to pursue it,” Daniel maintains a diverse range of musical activities throughout North America, Europe, and Africa. In the past few seasons, Daniel has enjoyed performances from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Lontano Ensemble (Southbank and Barbican Centres), Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Ossian Ensemble at St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Latvia International Festival, BBC Singers, Boston’s Back Bay Chorale, BBC Symphony Chamber Players, Wigmore Hall, and eighth blackbird. His music has been performed by conductors and soloists including Odaline de la Martinez, Leonard Slatkin, Jane Manning, Peter Maxwell Davies, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Scott Allen Jarrett, Caroline Balding, and Alan Yamamoto.
Most recently, Daniel completed a cello concerto for Lynn Harrell, which will be recorded in the winter of 2009. Other performers of his music have included members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Chicago Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, Philharmonia, Philadelphia, Northern Sinfonia, London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Ensemble Modern, English Chamber, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras. Over the past four years, Daniel’s chamber work “To Canaan’s fair and happy land” has received over 100 performances and broadcasts. In 2004, his commissioned opera If I Were a Voice premiered with Peabody Opera and was excerpted on National Public Radio.
Daniel has been awarded fellowships from the British Government (Marshall Fellow 2004-2007), the University of Michigan (Regent Fellow 2007-2009), the Yaddo Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In the summer of 2008, he served as inaugural Composer-in-Residence for the UBS Chamber Music Festival of Kentucky. A recent winner of the BMI Young Composer Award and ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, he holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music, Peabody Conservatory of Music, and Johns Hopkins University (dual degrees in American History). His composition teachers have included William Bolcom, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Daugherty, Chris Theofanidis, and Judith Weir.
Outside of composing, Daniel remains active as a collaborative pianist and occasionally performs with several new music groups (recordings include Naxos). An avid shaped-note singer since his early childhood in the rural South, he also has active interests in American popular and traditional musics – especially blues, old-time folk, and congregational singing. In addition to his training in Western classical music, Daniel has studied ethnomusicology and several African stringed instruments, primarily at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and through fieldwork in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Currently, Daniel is working on a book of essays on music, society, and politics.