About Daniel

Like most everyone, as a small child, my journey with music began with listening. Listening to my dad play accordion, guitar, banjo; listening to the few cassette tapes my parents had for road trips; listening to my sister (3 years older than I) learn to play the flute.

At 10 years old, I decided I wanted to play the saxophone (because I didn't know any other kids that played it), and as it turned out, my hands were barely big enough to reach the keys of an alto sax. My teacher, Bruce, helped me learn the basics of scales and embouchure, all of which I picked up relatively well. But at a certain point, I almost quit. I wasn't excited about what I was playing, So, we started playing these jazz duets together, and all of a sudden, I had a melody, a musical story to connect with and relate to. I felt alive. It felt real. Even then, the emotional aspect of music was what drove me. The chance to connect to something rich, wordless, and deeply emotional was, and still is, the very heart of what compels to continue on this mysterious, challenging and deeply fulfilling path.

In 2002, I went to Brevard College in western NC to obtain a double major, one in Saxophone and Jazz Studies, the other in Wilderness Leadership and Experiential Education. The same richness I experience when I play, I feel also when immersed in nature, with the mountains, the forests, the animals. The sense of being a part of something is so tangible for me in these settings, as it is in music, and at that point I couldn't decide which direction I would take, which vocation to devote to. And over the course of the next 2 decades, I continue to ask that question, moving between work as a wilderness guide (with Outward Bound and other groups focused on personal development in the wilderness settings), and work as a musician, playing in a vast variety of settings from night clubs, to casinos, to Kirtans, to Celtic rituals, to mystical poetry readings, to weddings, to restaurants, to festivals and ceremonies of all kinds.