Music Director Finalist – Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra

Montreal-based American conductor Daniel Black has earned a reputation as a conductor capable of delivering “vital and engaging” performances.  A music director finalist with the West Virginia Symphony, Daniel recently completed a highly-successful four-year tenure as Resident Conductor of the Florida Orchestra.  After joining as Assistant Conductor in 2018, he was quickly promoted to Associate Conductor and then Resident Conductor as his contract was twice extended.  With The Florida Orchestra, he conducted over fifty performances per season, including Masterworks, Pops, film concerts, Coffee Concerts, Family and Youth concerts, and more.  Prior to his engagement with The Florida Orchestra, Daniel served as Assistant and then Associate Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas, conducting over 150 performances.

Passionate about expanding the core orchestral repertoire, in recent seasons Daniel has led the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts’ triple concerto “Contact” with the string trio Time for Three, the U.S. premiere of Eleanor Alberga’s dramatic work “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and has conducted the works of Gabriela Lena Frank, Florence Price, Jesse Montgomery, Philip Glass, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Jimmy Lopez, Lembit Beecher, and more.  In 2016, he conducted the Midwest premiere and first professional recording of John Harmon’s Crazy Horse Symphony to great acclaim.

Fluent in Russian, and having studied at the famed St. Petersburg Conservatory, he has a particular affinity for the Russian repertoire, having led performances of Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, Rachmaninov’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Corelli” and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, among many others.  In 2022 he conducted Galina Ustvolskaya’s little known gem “Symphonic Poem No. 2” with The Florida Orchestra.

Equally at home in the opera pit, Daniel had a successful debut with Bernstein’s Candide at Michigan Opera Theatre, and has conducted the Dnipro State Opera in Ukraine, Coleridge-Taylor’s Dream Lovers with Chicago’s South Side Opera Company, and Northwestern University opera.  In 2017 he was assistant conductor for the China premiere of Bright Sheng’s Dream of the Red Chamber, touring China with the composer.  In 2017-2018, he received opera conducting fellowships from the Solti Foundation U.S.- working with Opera Theatre St. Louis and the Florentine Opera Company, respectively.

Daniel has been active as a guest conductor, having appeared with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Hamilton Philharmonic, San Antonio Symphony, Owensboro Symphony, Texarkana Symphony, St. Petersburg Symphony “Classica”, Rockford Symphony, Savannah Philharmonic and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, among others.  An innovative programmer, he has offered works such as Honneger’s Pacific 231, Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and Mason Bates’ Mothership.  In 2022-23, Daniel will return to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Florida Orchestra, among other engagements.

Daniel has thrice been awarded the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, and was a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Kurt Masur Conducting Workshop, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.  He has studied with Kurt Masur, Edo de Waart, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff, Larry Rachleff, Marin Alsop, Daniel Lewis, David Effron, and Gunther Schuller.  Daniel has studied conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, and Northwestern University, counting among his mentors Leonid Korchmar, Neil Varon and Victor Yampolsky. He has studied composition with Richard Danielpour.