Daniel Dorff

Daniel Dorff’s music has been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, commissioned 6 times by their education department resulting in over 20 performances; and commissioned twice by the Minnesota Orchestra’s Kinder Konzert series which has performed his music over 250 times.

His works have also been performed by the Baltimore Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, Spoleto Festival, and Eastman Wind Ensemble; chamber concerts of the Chicago Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Oregon Symphony; by clarinetists of the Chicago Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic, by pianist Marc-André Hamelin, flutists Jean-Pierre Rampal, Walfrid Kujala, and Denis Bouriakov; and conducted by Alan Gilbert and Wolfgang Sawallisch. Dorff has created arrangements for James Galway, Keith Emerson, and Lisa Loeb.

Flutist Leonard Garrison, clarinetist Shannon Scott, and pianist Rajung Yang have recently recorded an all-Dorff CD for Albany Records.

In February 2012, the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair hosted flutist Cindy Anne Broz in an hour-long presentation on Dorff's music. In August 2012, the National Flute Association's annual convention will present Cindy Anne Broz along with clarinetist Mark Margolies and pianist Martin Amlin in Dorff's Perennials and Three Romances, and Dorff will also perform with Ms. Broz in excerpts from their new collection A Treasury of Puccini Duets - 8 Favorite Arias arranged for Flute and Clarinet. In addition, piccoloist Nicole Esposito will perform Dorff's Flash! at the Iowa Piccolo Intensive and at the San Francisco Flute Festival.

New works in 2012 include Musetta Steps Out, a jazz version of Musetta's Waltz from La Bohème, for saxophone quartet, and Sonata (Three Lakes) for flute and piano. Commissioned by Barbary Haney for 2013 are the in-progress Flowers of St. Francis for solo bass clarinet, and another work for the Philadelphia Orchestra's "Sound All Around" concerts.

Highlights of 2012-13 will include premieres of the above works, over 60 performances by The Atlanta Opera of Dorff's Stone Soup: An Operatic Fable in One Delicious Act, and the European premiere of The Kiss, after the Painting by Gustav Klimt.

Dorff was born in New Rochelle, NY in 1956; acclaim came early with First Prize in the Aspen Music Festival’s annual composers’ competition at age 18 for his Fantasy, Scherzo and Nocturne for saxophone quartet. Dorff received degrees in composition from Cornell and University of Pennsylvania; teachers included George Crumb, George Rochberg, Karel Husa, Henry Brant, Ralph Shapey, Elie Siegmeister, and Richard Wernick. He studied saxophone with Sigurd Rascher. In 1996, Alan Gilbert named Dorff Composer-In-Residence for Symphony in C, in which he played bass clarinet from 1980 through 2002.

Daniel Dorff serves as Vice President of Publishing for Theodore Presser Company; he is a sought-after expert on music engraving and notation, having lectured at many colleges as well as Carnegie Hall, and advising the leading notation software companies. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Music Publishers' Association of the USA, the Board of Directors of the National Flute Association, and the Executive Board of The Charles Ives Society.