Felsenfeld was asked by composer Jason Robert Brown to do the orchestrations for the National Tour of his Tony- and Grammy-Award-Winning musical Parade. When rapper Jay-Z performed in Carnegie Hall, along with Alicia Keys and Nas, backed by a full orchestra, Felsenfeld was asked to do all of the orchestrations and arrangements. He also collaborated with The Roots (offering music on their Grammy-nominated record Undun, appearing with them and conducting the Metropolis Ensemble on the Jimmy Fallon Show) and ?uestlove with Keren Ann and David Murray. He also wrote arrangements for noth ShuffleCulture and Electronium, shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with ?uestlove, Sasha Grey, Deerhoof, Reggie Watts, and How to Dress Well and the Metropolis Ensemble. He also has written arrangements for Reneé Fleming, George Michael, and Wesley Stace, and is the Court Composer for John Wesley Harding’s Cabinet of Wonders, for which he wrote the theme—and which can be heard as an NPR Podcast. Residencies include Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, The Hermitage, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Felsenfeld is also an accomplished essayist, annotator, and author, with eight books to his name as well as articles for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Listen, Playbill, Time Out New York, Symphony Magazine, Strings Magazine, New Music Box, and Early Music Magazine; program notes for the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Philadelphia Orchestra, Miller Theatre, Wigmore Hall, and Carnegie Hall; liner notes for Naxos, Bridge, Koch, EMI, Sony, and Adjustable Music.
He served as curator for Mass Reconfigurations, a commissioning project through the Chorus of Trinity Wall Street and Novus; “The Score” in the Opinionator Section of the New York Times, he co-founded the New Music Gathering (an annual conference-concert series hybrid) which began in San Francisco in 2015 and continues to this day; he helmed Music After, a marathon concert on 9.11.11, co-produced with Eleonor Sandresky. He is a lead teaching artist and mentor at the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers program, as well as holding teaching positions at the Juilliard School, The Curtis Institute, the Walden School, and the New School for Social Research. Currently he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and child.
Composer Daniel Felsenfeld received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University Of California, has been commissioned, performed by, or collaborated with a wide variety of people, from Simone Dinnerstein and the New York Philharmonic, to Jay Z, Olympia Dukakis, and The Roots; from Authors Rick Moody and Jonathan Lethem to writer/musicians Lydia Lunch and playwright Arthur Kopit. The Anthony Burgess Foundation named him the Liana Burgess Artist in Residence for 2025, commissioning Sonata in H (a setting of an unpublished poem of Mr. Burgess) to be performed by members of the Halle Orchestra in 2025, and the Juilliard School (where Felsenfeld teaches) commissioned him, through the Kayden Commissioning Fund, to write How Can We Dance, a companion piece to Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet.
Others include Opera On Tap, The Chorus of Trinity Wall Street, The Juilliard School Chorus, UrbanArias, Metropolis Ensemble, Transient Canvas, The Crossing, International Contemporary Ensemble, Meerenai Shim, New York Philharmonic New Music Biennial, The Juilliard School, Ensemble Dal Niente, NANOWorks Opera, Interschool Orchestra of New York, Kathleen Supovè, Two Sense (Lisa Moore and Ashley Bathgate), ASCAP, San Jose Opera, ETHEL, Great Noise Ensemble, American Opera Projects, The Secret Opera, Da Capo Chamber Players, Judith Gordon, Blair McMillian, Cadillac Moon Ensemble, Transit, Redshift, Nadia Sirota, Jennifer Choi, Lara Downes, The Cell Theatre, Blair McMillen, Metropolis Ensemble, Two Sides Sounding, Megan Ihnen, Shepherdess, Kristin Elgersma, Eleanor Taylor and Jen Devore, Alcyone Ensemble, Parhelion Trio, Bryan Haslett (with Juxatonal), Xanthos Ensemble, Friction Quartet, Momenta Quartet, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, Cornelius Duffallo, Emily Manzo, Stephianie Mortimore, Zoe Sorrell, Mellissa Hughes, Corey Dargel, Jenny Lin, New York City Opera (VOX 2004), ACME, New Gallery Concert Series, Gabriella Diaz, Jody Redhage, Caroline Worra, Kirsten Chambers, Chelsea Feltman, Marcy Richardson, Kamala Sankaram, The Jessold Consort, New England Conservatory Philharmonic in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Galapagos Art Space, The Kimmell Center, Jordan Hall, the Kitchen, Miller Theatre, Merkin Hall, Wigmore Hall, Stanford University, Harvard University, National Sawdust, The Stone, Brown University, Le Poisson Rouge, City Winery, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C, and as part of the BEAT Festival, MATA Festival, Make Music New York, 21c Liederabend, Ecstatic Music Festival, Opera Grows in Brooklyn, New Brew, Serial Underground, Tenri Institute. and John Wesley Harding’s Cabinet of Wonders. He has been an Artist in Residence at Nancy Maocharian’s the cell theatre, and composer in residence for Ensemble 212.
