Daniel Godsil

Dr.  Daniel Godsil

About

PhD in Music Composition and Theory, University of California, Davis (2021)

MFA in Music Composition, Vermont College of Fine Arts (2015)

BM in Music Composition, Webster University (St. Louis/Vienna, 2004)



Daniel Godsil's music, which has been described by the San Francisco Classical Voice as having an “intense dramatic narrative,” draws from such eclectic influences as science fiction, thrash metal, and Brutalist architecture. His more recent work draws inspiration from the natural beauty of Northern California, his current home.

 

Winner of the 2019 League of Composers/ISCM Steven R. Gerber prize (for Cosmographia) and the 2017 Earplay Donald Aird Composition Competition (for his quartet Aeropittura), Godsil's music has been played by Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Talujon Percussion, Daedalus Quartet, Lydian String Quartet, Empyrean Ensemble, Metropolitan Orchestra of Saint Louis, UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, University Symphony Orchestra at California State University Fullerton, Knox-Galesburg Symphony, Secret String Quartet, and the Nova Singers, among many others. Recent film scores include the PBS documentary Boxcar People, Man Ray’s 1926 silent film Emak-Bakia and the feature film H.G. Wells’ The First Men In The Moon. Godsil was a finalist in the 2018 Lake George Music Festival chamber composition competition, as well as the 2014 and 2019 Red Note New Music Festival Composition Competitions. His choral works are published by Alliance Music Publishing and NoteNova Publishing, and his chamber and orchestral music is published by BabelScores in Paris.

 

Godsil is instructor of music at Columbia College in Sonora, California, where he teaches music theory and composition, applied lessons, and also conducts various performing ensembles. He has also served as artistic committee president for Ninth Planet New Music, a trailblazing new music ensemble based in California's SF Bay Area.

Publications

  • Building Worlds: Timbre in Music for Cinema (UC Davis 2021; copy/paste the following link) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46f2629z
  • SCI Journal of Scores, vol. 63 (Schott Music 2022; copy/paste the following link) https://wp.societyofcomposers.org/sci-journal-of-music-scores-selections/