Daniel Koontz, composer

Daniel Koontz was born in 1969 in Lafayette, Indiana. A
recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition
for 2001, Dan attended the Eastman School of Music, where
he studied piano and theory, graduating with distinction in
1992. He continued his training in composition, receiving a
Humanities and Fine Arts Fellowship to study at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, where he
completed his Ph.D. Dan’s teachers have included Michael
Gandolfi, Daria Semegen, and Daniel Weymouth. He has
won several awards from such organizations as ASCAP, the
American Music Center and the Society of Composers. He
has also received fellowships to attend the Wellesley
Composers Conference and the Voix Nouvelles festival at
Abbaye de Royaumont, France. Commissions for Dan’s
music have come from pianist Simon Docking, the Stony
Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, the Choral Society
of the Hamptons, Ensemble 21, the Fromm Music
Foundation, Swarthmore College, and the Nieuw Ensemble
(NL). His music has been performed throughout the United
States, in Canada, China, the Netherlands and France. Dan is
also active in electronic and computer music, and his tape
music has been heard both in the concert hall and in radio
broadcast. Current projects include a commission from Paul
Vaillancourt and Jeffery Meyer for a piece for piano and
percussion. He has taught music at Southampton College
and Stony Brook University. Dan is a Colleague of the
American Guild of Organists and serves as organist and choir
director for Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor, NY.