Daniel Cho
Musician. Creator. Artist.
CONCERT MUSIC COMPOSER
A Juilliard- and Rice-trained composer of concert music across a wide variety of narrative styles and acoustic landscapes, Daniel has drawn mentorship from an immense number of today’s greatest established composers, such as Dr. David Ludwig and Dr. Andrew Thomas from the Juilliard School; Dr. Pierre Jalbert, Dr. Shih-hui Chen, Dr. Anthony Brandt, and Dr. Arthur Gottschalk from Rice University; and Dr. Jonathan Bailey Holland from Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
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With an established oeuvre of nationally acclaimed contemporary music, Daniel draws on foundations as diverse as neoromantic approaches to reimagined tonality, post-minimalist frames of writing, and the timbral variety and diversity of electronic music. Sibelius Ultimate is his preferred engraving software of choice, although he also regularly navigates Finale, Dorico, and handwritten options.
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Daniel—as an individual unafraid of traversing difficult and controversial stories—has a history of applying his training in music towards communicating key narratives and making a measurable social impact on the world around him. For instance, he wrote his chamber orchestra piece Elegy 1113 in response to the Paris terrorist attacks and his piano solo piece Crisis: One Side following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
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Daniel also has an immense amount of expertise producing music and editing audio through Steinberg's Cubase 10.5 and Nuendo 11; Cakewalk by Bandlab; Melodyne 5; Audacity; and MOTU Digital Performer.
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And although film is his primary application of composition outside the concert hall, Daniel has also made a consistent commitment to writing for other thrilling integrations of various audiovisual media formats, such as music for podcasts and music premieres created in conjunction with visual art installations.
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FILM COMPOSER
As an award-winning creator of film scores distinctive for their keen versatility of affect and immense narrative subtlety, Daniel is unique in his broad ability to create complete movie soundtracks from start to finish. This includes his key skills of composing, arranging, orchestrating, midi sequencing, mixing/mastering, and much more. Daniel is immensely adaptable in his ability to write for an incredibly diverse range of narrative situations and demands—and given his classical background, he particularly specializes in producing large-scale orchestral music.
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Daniel primarily uses Cubase 10.5 for his film scoring and Steinberg libraries for his midi sequencing.
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VIOLINIST
Daniel is a dedicated performer, having played the violin since the age of five and a half. Among his mentors are Prof. Yumi Ninomiya Scott and late Prof. Aaron Rosand of the Curtis Institute of Music; Naoko Tanaka of the Juilliard School; and Paul Kantor of Rice University.
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His playing is characterized by a consistent commitment to orchestral leadership and an incisive attention to detail and emotional nuance in his playing. And his modes of creative expression center around bringing out the unusual and the brilliant in music.
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Some of Daniel's violin performance excerpts can also be found in the Gallery.
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PHOTOGRAPHER & VIDEOGRAPHER
Daniel is also an avid photography and videography enthusiast. He currently shoots on a Sony Alpha A7, and performs edits and color grading on Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and Premiere Pro. Pictures shot with this camera can be found among the media samples in the Gallery section.
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