Dan Blake

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Dan Blake has developed a wide-ranging career as a contemporary composer, performer and educator that “regards tradition as a welcoming playground best approached with a sense of wonder and adventure” (The Boston Globe). Blake’s music has been called “stunning” (All About Jazz), and his most recent release “The Digging” was described as “a creative essay on what can be done in the trio format” (Ottawa Citizen). In addition to his work as a leader, he has toured and recorded with three-time Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding, NEA Jazz Master Anthony Braxton, and Velvet Underground founding member John Cale, among many others. In his extended multi-disciplinary compositions, Blake weaves together his interests in world music, contemporary improvisation, animation, and performance art. This genre-bending catalog of works has earned him support from the Jerome Fund for New Music, ASCAP, and New Music USA. A musician keenly interested in bringing music together with social justice causes, Dan Blake produces the annual Concert To Feed The Hungry, a fundraising event celebrating the struggle to end hunger and malnutrition in poor communities around the world. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York and is currently on faculty at the New School for Social Research, and at the Conservatory at Brooklyn College.