Daniel Zlatkin, Composer, Cellist, and Educator
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SHORT:
 
Daniel Zlatkin is a composer, cellist, and educator with a passion for civic engagement. His mother, an accomplished flautist, was his first teacher. In his music he seeks to tell a story, stretch reality, explore the subconscious, and reconnect with the natural world. He enjoys mixing the inviting with the unexpected. His deepest inspiration is the human voice.
 
His music has been featured by National Sawdust (Brooklyn), the Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), Music From Angel Fire (New Mexico), I Care If You Listen, and the Fisher Center for Performing Arts (Hudson Valley). Upcoming projects include a saxophone quartet for Ensemble du Bout du Monde and an opera in one act.
 
He is currently a doctoral fellow at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, where he studies with Karim Al-Zand.
 
LONG:
 
​Daniel Zlatkin is a composer, cellist, and educator with a passion for civic engagement. His mother, an accomplished flautist, was his first teacher. In his music he seeks to tell a story, stretch reality, explore the subconscious, and reconnect with the natural world. He enjoys mixing the inviting with the unexpected. His deepest inspiration is the human voice.
 
His music has been featured by National Sawdust (Brooklyn), the Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), Music From Angel Fire (New Mexico), I Care If You Listen, and the Fisher Center for Performing Arts (Hudson Valley). Upcoming projects include a saxophone quartet for Ensemble du Bout du Monde and an opera in one act.
 
His compositions have been performed and promoted by ensembles including Choral Chameleon, The Brass Project, Da Capo Chamber Players, Front Porch, Khorikos, American Modern Ensemble, Lake Forest Civic Orchestra, New Haven Symphony, NUNC, University of Michigan Philharmonia, TŌN, and the Vanguard Reed Quintet.
 
Solo artists who have championed his works include baritone Luke Sutliff, cellists Dave Eggar, Kamila Dotta, Raman Ramakrishnan, Richard Narroway, and Russell Houston, conductors Jerry Hou, Leon Botstein, Matthew Oltman, Régulo Stabilito, Robert Nordling, Vince Peterson, and William Boughton, flautists Patricia Spencer and Hannah Occeña, guitarist Kevin Sherwin, mezzo-sopranos Kristen Bate and Shannon Keegan, oboists Andrew Cooper and Sagar Anupindi, pianists Blair McMillen and Tomoki Park, saxophonists Jeff Siegfried and Don-Paul Kahl, sheng virtuoso Wu Wei, sopranos Kresley Figueroa and Lucy Dhegrae, trumpeter Nathan Plante, violinists Esther Noh, Brian Krinke, Mary Grace Johnson, and Katherine Lim, and violists Matthew Weathers and Jiawei Yan.
 
He is a co-founder of the musical mentorship organization Cuerdas Para Cali, and actively seeks ways to present contemporary classical music to the broader community, especially in schools. He is a recipient of a Davis Projects for Peace grant (2015), and has also earned support for outreach through Rice University's Sviatoslav Richter Fund (2020) and the University of Michigan's EXCEL Enterprise Fund (2016, '17). He has been a finalist three times for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award (2015, '18, '19). He was a finalist in the 2020 Verdant Vibes call for scores, and was an alternate in the 2020 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
 
Daniel received a BM in composition and cello performance as well as a BA in political studies from Bard College, where he studied with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, Peter Wiley, Roger Berkowitz, Walter Russell Mead, and Paul Marienthal. He received a MM in composition from the University of Michigan, where he worked with Evan Chambers, Michael Daugherty, Anthony Elliott, and Kevin Korsyn; he was also elected into the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. He is currently a doctoral fellow at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, where he studies with Karim Al-Zand.