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A musician and interdisciplinary artist of diverse interests, Daniel Schreiner is fashioning a career of experimentation and radical discovery. As a concert pianist, Daniel has performed widely across the United States, France, and Italy, appearing at LA’s Walt Disney Hall, DC’s Kennedy Center, and NYC’s National Sawdust, Rockwood Music Hall, and DiMenna Center, to name a few. As an avid chamber musician, Daniel regularly plays with InfraSound and Contemporaneous, whose 2023 performance of Dylan Mattingly’s six-hour opera, Stranger Love, was lauded by the New York Times as “exact and detailed, but also lively and openly dancing, as full of personality as any singer.” Daniel has also worked with the JACK Quartet, Alan Pierson of Alarm Will Sound, Beth Morrison Projects, Kathy Supové, Betsy Jolas, Ensemble Calliopée, LIGAMENT, BlackBox Ensemble, NewMusicMannes, and the Berkshire Symphony. Having also majored in Studio Art while attending Williams College, Daniel is interested in integrating two-dimensional visual art, sound art, and performance art with piano music. His experimental sound art installations have been featured in exhibitions in Sardinia, Italy; Berlin, Germany; and Yonkers, NY. A recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship from the Fondation des États-Unis, Daniel spent the 2019-20 academic year in Paris, France, studying at La Schola Cantorum with Billy Eidi and performing works by Fauré, Debussy, Messiaen, Murail, and contemporary Paris-based composers. Daniel’s latest projects include a 36-minute piano composition inspired by the water cycle, multi-movement graphic scores written for open instrumentation, and new collaborations spawned from his recent residency with OneBeat. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his husband and cantankerous shih tzu. 

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A musician and interdisciplinary artist of diverse interests, Daniel Schreiner is fashioning an eclectic career marked by experimentation, cross-genre exploration, and impassioned social engagement. As a piano soloist and chamber musician, Daniel has performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall (Los Angeles), the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), National Sawdust, Rockwood Music Hall, and the DiMenna Center for Classical Music (New York City), the Fondation des États-Unis (Paris), Ferrara Music Festival Concert Series (New York City), New Music on the Point (Vermont), Williams College (Massachusetts), Bard College (New York), Denison College (Ohio), Academie Internationale d’Été de Nice (France), soundSCAPE Festival (Italy), nief-norf Summer Music Festival (Tennessee), and at various small venues in Brooklyn, NY. Daniel is a regular performer with InfraSound and Contemporaneous, whose 2023 performance of Dylan Mattingly’s six-hour opera, Stranger Love, was lauded by the New York Times as “most impressive…well versed in Mattingly’s idiom, and well suited to take on such an immense, difficult score…exact and detailed, but also lively and openly dancing, as full of personality as any singer.” Daniel has also had the opportunity to work with the illustrious composer Betsy Jolas, Beth Morrison Projects, Alan Pierson of Alarm Will Sound, the JACK Quartet, Kathy Supové, Ensemble Calliopée, LIGAMENT, the Mannes American Composers Ensemble, Balance Campaign, BlackBox Ensemble, NewMusicMannes, and the Berkshire Symphony, to name a few.

Originally from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Daniel received his Bachelor’s degree from Williams College, where he won the 2012 Concerto Competition and received Highest Honors for his performance thesis-recital, which focused on the influence of Claude Debussy. He supplemented his undergraduate education at the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria on a semester abroad, studying under Albert Sassmann. In 2017, Daniel received a Master of Music in piano performance from Mannes College of Music in New York City, studying under Dr. Thomas Sauer. His graduation recital, which featured works by J.S. Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Prokofiev, and Tristan Murail, won the Steinway Award for exceptional performance. 

Having also majored in Studio Art while attending Williams College, Daniel is interested in integrating two-dimensional visual art, sound art, and performance art with the musical realm. His experimental sound art installations have been featured in exhibitions in Sardinia, Italy; Berlin, Germany; and Yonkers, NY. A recipient of the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship from the Fondation des États-Unis, Daniel spent the 2019-20 academic year in Paris, France, studying at La Schola Cantorum with Billy Eidi and performing works by Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, Murail, and contemporary Paris-based composers. Daniel’s latest projects include a trilogy of piano works inspired by the water cycle, multi-movement graphic scores written for open instrumentation, and new collaborations spawned from his recent residency with OneBeat. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his husband and cantankerous shih tzu. 

artistic statement

Ever since my first lesson 25 years ago, the piano has been an indispensable, self-sustaining outlet of expression for me. As much as I love playing piano for myself, I’ve also always felt compelled to perform and share music with others. Trained conventionally as a concert pianist in the Western Classical tradition, I’ve since been unlearning restrictive, categorical definitions of music and leaning into my own eclectic, genre-bending, and interdisciplinary inclinations. The pandemic and the OneBeat Virtual Residency in 2021 accelerated this artistic evolution, leading me to pursue seriously sound design/production, improvisation, and composition inspired by graphic scores and field recording. Although I’m committed to continue broadening my creative horizons, I will always find solace, joy, and transcendence in the natural, resonant sound world of the acoustic piano.

My current creative work centers around the exploration of musical expansion, healing, and radical transcendence through the lens of queerness. In my experience as a queer person in a conformist, capitalistic society, I often feel compelled to subvert rigid categorizations devised to comfort the heteropatriarchy and invalidate the Other. For me, the inherently fluid, immersively powerful nature of sound itself has the potential to challenge those committed to the status quo, provide escape for those wearied by the status quo, and invite all people into spaces of queer agency and empowerment. I often revel in drawing connections between queerness and the organic properties of the natural world to highlight alternate, fundamental sources of queer power.

Photography by Marc Hall