Musician
Choral Artist
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel was very active in the musical community of New York and Connecticut. From singing in the Yale Camerata and its chamber chorus, Pro Musica (both affiliated with Yale University's Institute of Sacred Music), to joining CONCORA and Voce, to singing with and fundraising for Pro Arte Singers, to making his Caramoor debut in 2013 with Charis Chamber Voices, to barbershopping around nursing homes, to caroling at Martha Stewart's "festive" private Christmas party, Daniel has contributed to the life of choral singing in the region. Before moving to the East Coast, Daniel sang with choral groups in Carnegie Hall on two occasions, with the National Honor Children's Chorus (1994) and Windy City Performing Arts (2006) in a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen® Breast Cancer Foundation.
Soloist
Daniel began singing seriously at the age of 8 when he sang with the Porter County Children's Choir, which was often accompanied by organist Martin Jean at Valparaiso University. 25 years later, Daniel and Martin Jean both ended up at Yale Institute of Sacred Music - Daniel a member of Yale Camerata and Martin as Director of the Institute. Since then, Daniel has been invited to sing the arias of Mozart with the Hamden Symphony Orchestra, as well as the solos of the Faure Requiem and Beethoven's German Mass during Greenwich, CT's Summer Sings program. At Yale, Daniel sang numerous solos with Yale Camerata and Yale Pro Musica, including Lang's the little match girl passion, Bach cantatas, Mozart masses, and world premieres of new music. When a divinity student in Chicago, Daniel sang two Bach cantatas and sang with members of Chicago a Capella. But it is mostly Daniel's facility of range (both baritone range and basso profundo) that makes him an in-demand soloist for Handel's Messiah in the New York tristate area and Chicago.
Instrumentalist
Besides a handful of memorized Nocturnes and Preludes on the piano, teaching Suzuki Violin, and playing percussion for an ad hoc group at Yale, Daniel focuses most of his time as an instrumentalist on playing the double bass. As a bassist, he regularly plays with the Danbury Symphony Orchestra and the American Chamber Orchestra, with which he hoped to tour Europe in the summer of 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Daniel has also frequented other orchestras in Connecticut, such as the Danbury and Hamden Symphony Orchestras and the pit orchestra for Troupers Light Opera, most recently accompanying Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore. While still a student, Daniel played in the Valparaiso University Symphony Orchestra and was principal bassist for the VU Chamber Orchestra while still a freshman in high school. He, later on, went to Olivet Nazarene University with the highest music scholarship the university ever granted as the principal bassist of the ONU Symphony Orchestra.