Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer based in New York City. He began his career as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music underground, producing ambient-industrial works for independent labels in the U.S. and abroad. He spent the ‘90s in California where he studied at CalArts and Mills College. His principal teachers include Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Mel Powell. Equally influential where his studies with Terry Riley during several workshops in California and Colorado.
As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and contexts, including instrumental chamber music, free improvisation, and various forms of electronica and sound art. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music. As a performer he is active with his own chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations and as an occasional soloist. He has collaborated with a variety of creative artists including Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, Loren Dempster, JD Parran, John Ingle, India Cooke, Andrea Williams, William Winant and and Miguel Frasconi.
Dan’s work has been presented at Merkin Concert Hall (NYC), Diapason Gallery for Sound (NYC), Roulette (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC) The Kitchen (NYC), Experimental Intermedia (NYC) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (CA), New Langton Arts (CA), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA) and other venues. He has received commissions from several ensembles and performers, including Gamelan Son of Lion, the sfSoundGroup, baritone Thomas Buckner, and clarinetist Matt Ingalls. Dan has held residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. Also active as curator and presenter, he currently produces the monthly music and sound series Musical Ecologies at The Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn.