Dan Visconti

Dan Visconti, USA "Bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a powerfully crafted lyricism." Cleveland Plain Dealer

Dan Visconti (b. 1982) composes concert music infused with the directness of expression and maverick spirit of the American vernacular. His compositions often explore the rough timbres, propulsive rhythms, and improvisational energy characteristic of jazz, bluegrass, and rock-elements that tend to collide in unexpected ways with Visconti's experience as a classically-trained violinist, resulting in a growing body of music one reviewer describes as "both mature and youthful, bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a powerfully crafted lyricism."

Upcoming concert seasons feature several premieres of Visconti's compositions, including a work commissioned by the Jupiter Quartet for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's international string quartet series at Alice Tully Hall; an extended work for cellist Joshua Roman and pianist Helen Huang commissioned by Town Hall Seattle; and a consortium commission for the Gryphon, Deseret, and Triple Helix piano trios awarded by the 2010 International Barlow Prize. Other recent commissions have come from the Kronos Quartet, the Berlin Philharmonic Scharoun Ensemble, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Albany Symphony, the Annapolis Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Antares, the Bakken Trio, the Corigliano Quartet, the Janaki String Trio, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Visconti's music continues to receive performances by some of the top interpreters of contemporary music, including eighth blackbird, Brave New Works, Vox Novus, the Sybarite Chamber Players, and Washington DC's Contemporary Music Forum; in recent seasons the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, the American Composers Orchestra, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Spokane Symphony, and the South Carolina Philharmonic have also given his orchestral works repeated hearings.

His compositions have been honored with the Berlin Prize, the Bearns Prize from Columbia University, the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the performing arts, and the Cleveland Arts Prize; awards from BMI and ASCAP, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Society of Composers, and the National Association of Composers USA; and grants from the Naumburg Foundation, the American Music Centert, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bascom Little Fund, and Chamber Music America. He has also been the recipient of artist fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Copland House, Yaddo, the Lucas Artists Program at Villa Montalvo, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Currently, Visconti is engaged in a multi-year residency with opera companies including Seattle Opera, Opera Theatre St. Louis, New York City Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera as recipient of the Douglas Moore Fellowship in American Opera.

Visconti studied composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Yale School of Music, primarily with Margaret Brouwer, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ezra Laderman, and Zhou Long. He is a member of BMI and currently resides in Washington, DC.

Artist's Website: danvisconti.com

GUITARS INTERNATIONAL