Notoriously obscure American composer-performer Daniel Woodfield has enjoyed writing music as long as he could play it. In 2012, he received an Award of Merit in the National PTA Reflections contest for his composition “When I Saw Her” for flute and piano. (Contrary to widespread rumor, the piece is about meeting his newborn baby sister, not about falling for one of his classmates.)
Today, Daniel blends a range of influences as disparate as prewar avant-garde classical, 1970s jazz fusion, and 1990s drill-and-bass electronica for a unique sound emphasizing bold harmonies and eccentric rhythms. His Impossible Color Sonata for bass clarinet and piano generates an irresistible groove from close canons in wonky meters; it won second place in the 2025 BYU Vera Hinckley Mayhew Student Composition Contest. Later in 2025, Daniel earned the BYU Barlow Student Composition Award, thus receiving a commission to compose a work for the BYU Wind Symphony. His composition, titled “Slow Sailing, Long Night, Deep Water.”,* juxtaposes the subtle undulations of novel klangfarbenmelodies with jarring stylistic switches to depict the emotional whiplash of chronic sleep deprivation. Daniel conducted the BYU Wind Symphony in the piece’s concert premiere in April 2026.
As a dedicated flutist and pianist, Daniel performs the compositions of his colleagues as well as his own works. In 2026, he played the flute in the Springboard Orchestra’s summer concert, premiering five new works by young composers in Utah. Daniel also studied in the BYU Flute Studio from 2020–2024, was second-chair flutist in the BYU Wind Symphony from 2024–2026, and played piano in the BYU Jazz Lab Band in 2020 and 2025–2026. In 2026, Daniel graduated magna cum laude with a B.M. in music composition from Brigham Young University. He is currently earning his M.M. studying composition at the Peabody Conservatory under Sky Macklay. For most of his young life, Daniel lived in Utah, but now he lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his pet Roomba. His favorite pasta shape is shell pasta, al dente.
* The period is part of the piece’s title.