Dan’s original music has been commissioned and performed by the American Composers Orchestra, American Brass Quintet, Dallas Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Orpheus, New York Chamber Symphony, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Seattle Chamber Music Society, Music from Angel Fire, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and the Cypress String Quartet, among many others.
In 1994 he became the first composer alumnus of Young Concert Artists, and has been recognized with awards and fellowships from ASCAP, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Presser Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Copland House.
Active as a conductor, arranger, and orchestrator, Dan directed the studio orchestras for Brad Mehldau’s Ride into the Sun (2025) & Highway Rider (2010), Jake Shimabukuro’s Grand Ukelele (2012), Joshua Redman’s Walking Shadows (2013), and albums by Calexico and Lisa Loeb.
He is currently Composer-in-Residence of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
As the President of Modern Works Music Publishing, Dan has represented a portfolio of over 100,000 iconic works by diverse artists including John Legend, Ronnie Spector, Erroll Garner, Gabriella Smith, Herbie Hancock, Third Eye Blind, Ani DiFranco, Michael Torke, Kip Winger, Bootsy Collins, Andy Summers, Janis Ian, J.D. Souther, and many others. Modern Works became a division of Red Brick Songs, a Toronto-based publisher, in 2023.
Dan has served as a consultant for music copyright valuation, rights management, and licensing. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Penn, and the University of Arizona Eller School of Business Alternative Assets class, and the Rogers School of Law Copyright and IP Management classes.
In 2014, he co-founded the Tucson Jazz Festival. The same year, he became a Flinn-Brown Fellow of the Arizona Center for Civic Leadership.
Dan is Treasurer of the BMI Foundation.