Biography
An American composer and pianist whose wide-ranging collaborations have produced an extensive catalog of keyboard, chamber, and vocal works, Daniel Pesca also maintains a strong commitment to teaching. He has held positions at multiple universities and now serves on the composition faculty of the Eastman School of Music. Born in 1985 and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, he began piano lessons at age seven. The following year he started improvising and writing music, and at twelve he finished a piece for the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra. After skipping a grade in elementary school, he was homeschooled through his early teens to devote greater time to composition and practice. He finished high school at sixteen and entered the Eastman School of Music to study with Nelita True, receiving his B.A. in 2005. He then pursued further training with Logan Skelton at the University of Michigan, where in 2007 he formed a duo with flutist Sarah Frisof. Returning to Eastman for doctoral studies, he worked with David Liptak, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and again with Nelita True, completing the degree in 2016. That year he joined the University of Chicago as lecturer, artist-in-residence, and director of the chamber music program, and he issued the album Looking Back: The Flute Music of Joseph Schwantner with Frisof on Centaur Records. In 2017 he became a founding member of the Zohn Collective, which brought out Songtree: Music of Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon the next year. He co-established the Grossman Ensemble in 2018; the group released Fountain of Time in 2020. He also recorded a second album with Frisof, Beauty Crying Forth: Flute Music by Women Across Time. Additional projects from this period include Matthew Schreibeis: Sandburg Songs and John Liberatore: Catch Somewhere, both with the Zohn Collective, as well as the solo release Promontory, which presented first recordings of his own pieces alongside new works by Augusta Read Thomas, Aaron Travers, and Alison Yun-Fei Jiang. After teaching at the University of Maryland from 2019 to 2023, he returned to Eastman as Assistant Professor of Composition. Now based in New York, he continues to perform as a soloist and collaborator and appears on the 2024 recording Night Shall Break with Hanna Hurwitz and Colin Stokes.
Albums
