Photo by Wade Andrew
SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Buck McDaniel, born in 1994, is an American composer who writes orchestral music, works for the stage, chamber music, and sacred music. His influences range from the American Minimalist tradition and the music of his childhood in the American South. His work with religious institutions spurred a choral collaboration with recording artist Sam Smith presented on NBC’s Saturday Night Live (2023), and his chamber work Memory Ground (2021) for the Desdemona Ensemble was presented by The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In 2022, McDaniel lead a four-week festival with scholars Eric Thomas and Carla Roland of experimental liturgies focusing on Queer identity at The General Theological Seminary, and a new work with Thomas will premiere at Pride 2024 in Washington, D.C. His organ music has been championed internationally by artists Todd Wilson (Belfast Pipeworks Festival), James McVinnie (Lincoln Cathedral), and Nicolas Haigh (Saint Thomas Church, 5th Avenue).
His works for the stage include Fire on the Water (2019), a multi-media collaboration with producer Jacob Kirkwood and director Raymond Bobgan for Cleveland Public Theatre and Stranger in the Garden (2022), a one-act adaptation of Edith Wharton’s ‘Afterward’ for organ & narrator with actress Caitlin Caruso-Dobbs that premiered at The Actors’ Chapel in New York City.
A frequent collaborator with Kirkwood, McDaniel composed the sound installation Landscape Piece (2019) for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and the studio works Patterns on Dufy (2019) with saxophonist Noa Even and Difference & Repetition (2018). Other collaborations include an arrangement of Nico Muhly’s Bright Mass with Canons (2014) for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Muhly Variations (2012) for the Argot Trio recorded on the Centaur label, and both concert and studio arrangements with Mourning [A] BLKstar, Elvis Depressedly, and ITEM.
He serves as Director of Music at the Church of Our Saviour and Chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary, Artist in Residence at The General Theological Seminary, and lives in New York City.
LONG BIOGRAPHY
Born in Columbia, Mississippi in 1994, Buck McDaniel is a composer based in New York City. His works have been performed both internationally in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Ireland and nationally in Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Washington (DC), Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Seattle. His arrangement of Nico Muhly’s Bright Mass with Canons premiered at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute under Ann Jones, and his work Detroit Cycles premiered as part of the nationally syndicated radio program The Moth with violinist Natalie Frakes. His work has been workshopped by ensembles including the JACK Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and the Genkin Philharmonic. Following Todd Wilson’s premiere of his work Three Voices at the 2014 Belfast Pipeworks Festival, organist James McVinnie toured the work in the United Kingdom with performances at both Lincoln Cathedral and Hereford Cathedral. His Psalm Preludes for organ have entered the regular repertoire of Saint Thomas Church, 5th Avenue in New York City.
Featured in The New York Times, Time Out New York, WNYC, and Spectrum News One, his 2021 chamber work Memory Ground was commissioned by The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Performed by saxophonist Noa Even and the Desdemona Ensemble, his saxophone concerto for Even, So Love was crown’d, but music won the cause, was commissioned by the Rowan University Wind Ensemble and premiered in 2022 under Joseph Higgins.
An active and willing collaborator, McDaniel has worked with ensembles Zeitgeist and the No Exit New Music Ensemble on multiple projects. He has composed several works for No Exit including Light Down, an extended take on an early American murder ballad, and Zeitgeist who subsequently toured his work Scherzo in Four Movements throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In his artistic partnership with producer Jacob Kirkwood, he has created multiple concert and studio works, including the sound installation Landscape Piece which debuted at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019, and Patterns on Dufy, which premiered in Cleveland, Ohio in 2022. In 2021, his organ cycle compiled in collaboration with Rev. Timothy Weisman, Five Meditations on the Nativity, received its first performance at the landmark National City Christian Church in Washington, DC with Derrick Ian Meador, organ.
As an arranger, he has worked on live shows and studio recordings with artists ranging from Ben Folds, Mourning [A] BLKstar, times10, and CASH.FORGOLD. In 2019, he conducted his string arrangements in a live concert with ITEM at the historic Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio. As a studio musician, projects include pianist in promotional materials for Maira Kalman’s book Beloved Dog and conducting his own brass arrangements on the times10 release Steve’s Lunch.
In his role as the 2018/19 Kulas Composer Fellow at Cleveland Public Theatre, McDaniel served as composer and conductor in several productions, culminating in the evening length multi-media work Fire on the Water for ensemble and electronics that ran for 19 performances. He conducted this work in the opening concert of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s 2019 NeoSonic Festival and live on WRUW-FM on the program Live from Cleveland. Additionally, he served as conductor, arranger, and orchestrator in the world premiere production of the musical Everything is Okay by Caitlin Lewins and Melissa Crum.
A frequent collaborator with tenor Matthew Jones and horn player Van Parker, his work On Seeing Two Brown Boys in a Catholic Church debuted in 2018 with the DC String Orchestra under Ahmed Al Abacca with Jones and Parker as soloists. Other works composed for Jones include I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free, Charmed Syllables, This is What You Shall Do, She Loves and She Confesses Too (after Purcell), and The Dunbar Carol which debuted in New York City in 2020. In collaboration with Jones and Parker he curated several concerts and events at Historic St. John’s Church in Cleveland, a notable Underground Railroad landmark. Commissioned by Theresa May and fp creative, his work I Want to Die While You Love Me for tenor, brass trio, and piano debuted with Jones in Cleveland in 2020.
As an organist, McDaniel has given recitals across the United States including Heinz Memorial Chapel (Pittsburgh), St. John’s Church (NYC), Trinity Cathedral (Cleveland), Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch (Cleveland), and the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle (Jackson). During his time as Organist & Director of Music at the Historic St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland, the choir was invited to perform at the 2018 Evangelism Matters Conference, a national convening of the Episcopal Church with Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry. Other notable performances with the St. Andrew Choir include Cleveland Public Theatre’s annual Underground Railroad commemoration, Station Hope, and the funeral for the Rev. Fr. Himie-Budu Shannon at Trinity Cathedral. As Director of Music for the Wilma Ruth Combs Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, he conducted a diocesan choir in multiple liturgies throughout the Diocese of Ohio.
As keyboard soloist, he performed the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony with the Cleveland Philharmonic, the Stravinsky Piano Concerto with the University of Southern Mississippi Wind Ensemble, and his own Triple Concerto with the Cleveland State University Symphony Orchestra. The Grammy Award-winning Cleveland Chamber Symphony premiered his orchestral work Three Movements in 2015.
Recordings of his work are available on all streaming platforms, and his Muhly arrangement is published through St. Rose Music. He serves as Organist & Director of Music at the The Roman Catholic Church of Our Saviour, Park Avenue and the Chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary, where he conducts the Choir of Our Saviour & Sacred Hearts, and as Director of Chapel Music at The General Theological Seminary on Chelsea Square. He lives in New York City.