ABOUT

Daniel Pesca leads a rich, varied career as composer and pianist. He has been hailed as “the perfect composer-virtuoso pianist” (All about the Arts) and “equally talented as pianist, composer and advocate of his peers’ works” (Fanfare). The common theme in Daniel’s myriad activities is his passion for collaboration. His longstanding partnerships with a variety of ensembles, individual musicians, and fellow composers has cultivated a prolific body of work.

Since its establishment in 2018, Daniel has been a member of the Grossman Ensemble, the ensemble-in-residence at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition at the University of Chicago. Daniel’s work for the ensemble, New Examples of Confusion, was premiered in March 2022 and has since been performed by the Oberlin New Music Ensemble. Altogether, the Grossman Ensemble has premiered forty works, including pieces by Shulamit Ran, Chen Yi, Du Yun, Jason Eckhardt, Sarah Gibson, Amy Williams, Anthony Cheung, and Paula Mattheson. Its first CD, The Fountain of Time, was released on CCCC Records in August 2020.

Daniel is a founding member and co-director of the Zohn Collective, established in 2017. In October 2019, the collective’s Midwest tour of Oberlin, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and International House at the University of Chicago featured the premiere performances of Daniel’s song cycle Nocturnes, setting poetry by Irving Feldman. This work was premiered by tenor Zach Finkelstein and commissioned with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. The ensemble’s other projects include an opera production in Guadalajara, Mexico and university residencies at Notre Dame, Columbus State, Vanderbilt, and Northern Kentucky. The collective has garnered support from the Ditson Fund at Columbia University, New Music USA, and US Artists International, among others. The collective has released albums on Albany and Oberlin Music, with a third forthcoming on New Focus. In the coming year, the ensemble looks forward to projects abroad in Düsseldorff and Beijing. 

Daniel’s recent chamber works include Walk with me, my Joy (2022), a twenty-minute quartet composed for Constellations Chamber Concerts, premiered in Washington, DC alongside flutist Sarah Frisof, cellist Christine Lamprea, and percussionist Ian Rosenbaum. His sextet for the American Wild Ensemble, From Noon to Noon (2016), was performed over a dozen times at national parks across the country and is recorded on the ensemble’s debut album. His violin and piano sonata A Line for a Walk (2019) was composed for Hanna Hurwitz, and premiered at Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival of New Music in October 2021. FirstMuse Chamber Music in Rochester, NY commissioned three chamber works from Daniel, including his large Piano Trio (2017), which has since frequently been performed by the Zohn Collective.

Daniel’s other recent works include: Pezzettino (2020) for flute, cello and narrator, based on the Leo Lionni book by the same name, which was given its online video premiere by Emlyn Johnson and Daniel Ketter through the Eric Carle Museum of Children’s Literature in Massachusetts; Terra Incognita (2019), a song cycle commissioned in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, premiered under the Saturn V rocket at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center; Together, Apart, Together (2018), a trio composed for Sarah Frisof and New Morse Code (Hannah Collins and Mike Compitello), commissioned through New Music USA for workshops at the Lansing Correctional Facility in Kansas; Feldman Sonnets (2021), another setting of poetry by Irving Feldman, commissioned by Zach Finkelstein; Ripple, Current, Eddy (2016) for cello and piano, commissioned  by Audrey Q. Snyder through New Music USA for the project “New Music // New Film,” developed in collaboration with video artist Xuan and premiered at Constellations Chicago; The Distance of the Moon (2014), commissioned by the Benson Forum for Creativity and and premiered at NYU, and subsequently performed internationally; In Solitude (2020) for the project COVID-19: Contagious Solitude organized by cellist Paul Dwyer; and, most recently, a cycle of Three Intermezzos for solo guitar (2023), composed for Dieter Hennings.

Since 2020, Daniel has also composed voluminously for solo piano, and has frequently performed his own work in recital. His acclaimed solo album Promontory, released fall 2021 on Neuma, features two of his solo pieces, Watercolors I- II (2020) and Hyde Park Boulevard (2020). The album also includes the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’s Bell Illuminations, dedicated to Daniel, as well as works Daniel premiered by Alison Yun-Fei Jiang and Aaron Travers. Regarding this release, Take Effect Reviews wrote: “the composer and pianist Daniel Pesca knows how to elicit the most amount of range and richness out of a piano.” Besides the recordings already named, Daniel has recorded extensively; his discography includes world premiere recordings of solo work by Matthew Schreibeis; Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez’s work for piano and ensemble, Diaries, dedicated to Daniel; and premiere recordings of major chamber works by Tania León and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. His premiere recording of Bernard Rands’s Four Impromptus will appear on Nimbus, and additional recordings of music by John Liberatore, Linda Dusman, and Yvar Mikhashoff are due for release soon.

Altogether, Daniel has performed the world premieres of over 150 works. Besides the ensembles named above, he has shared the stage with many leading groups, including Ensemble Dal Niente, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Inscape Chamber Orchestra. Daniel has performed at the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, the Dame Myra Hess Concerts in Chicago, at June in Buffalo, and at festivals devoted to contemporary music in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Vermont. As concerto soloist, Daniel has appeared at Carnegie Hall and the Aspen Music Festival, as well as with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, Oberlin New Music Ensemble, Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh, Orchestra of the League of Composers, Eastman BroadBand, University of Michigan Symphony Band, University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Slee Sinfonietta. His concerto credits include the Carter Double Concerto, Messiaen’s massive Des Canyons aux etoiles as well as his Oiseuax Exotiques, the Berg Chamber Concerto, Robert Morris’s Concerto for Piano and Winds, and Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety.

Daniel has a sixteen-year duo partnership with flutist Sarah Frisof (University of Maryland). Together, Daniel and Sarah have performed over forty recitals, at venues such as the Interlochen Center for the Arts, the Arts Club of Washington, and universities, conservatories, and conferences across the country. Their recording of the music of Joseph Schwantner was released on Centaur in July 2016 to critical acclaim. Their second CD, Beauty Crying Forth: Flute Music by Women Across Time, appeared on Furious Artisans in August 2020. Daniel’s flute and piano pieces Gestures of Grace (2021) and Stanza (2007) were composed for and premiered by Sarah.

Beginning Fall 2023, Daniel will be Assistant Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music. Prior to his appointment at Eastman, Daniel served from 2019 to 2023 as assistant professor in the music department at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). While at UMBC, Daniel taught piano and composition, led the student new music ensemble, was a member of the faculty ensemble Ruckus, led planning and curation of the department’s twelfth LiveWire Festival of Contemporary Music in October 2021, built collaborations with community partners in the Baltimore/DC region, appeared frequently as competition adjudicator and guest clinician, and helped curate and moderate Teaching Composition: A Symposium on Composition Pedagogy in October 2022. Also while in Baltimore, Daniel co-founded Keys to Inclusion, a multi-institutional initiative to teach, research, perform and record piano works by Black American composers. The initiative has resulted in many lectures, recitals, masterclasses and performances both remotely and on university campuses around the country and has garnered support from many sources, including the Hrabowski Innovation Award at UMBC. The group has presented at important national-level conferences, including Music Teachers National Association, College Music Society, and the Keyboard Pedagogy Conference. In these same years, Daniel helped curate and organize Constellations Chamber Concerts as a member of its programming committee, including frequent performances on the series as well as the contribution of program notes, production of podcasts, and online event hosting.

Prior to UMBC, Daniel was Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago from 2016–2019. While at Chicago, Daniel organized and managed the university-wide Chamber Music Program and collaborated frequently with faculty and student composers, including Sam Pluta, Augusta Read Thomas, Aaron Helgeson, and Tonia Ko. He also performed with ensembles-in-residence Imani Winds and Spektral Quartet. Daniel has also taught at Ithaca College, Syracuse University, and Northeastern Illinois University. Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, Daniel began composing at age 8 and had composed over 100 works by the time he began his undergraduate studies at age 16. Daniel holds degrees from Eastman and the University of Michigan.