Department of Music

Dan Welcher: brief biographical summary

 Composer Dan Welcher won the Arts and Letters Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in May of 2012.  The citation (which went along with a cash prize) says the following: “As intense as it is elegant, Dan Welcher’s music takes his listeners on a surprising yet inevitable path…Every work in his wide-ranging catalogue is written with the strongest musical signature”.  With over one hundred works to his credit, two-thirds of which are published, Welcher has written in virtually every medium, including opera, concerto, symphony, wind ensemble, vocal literature, piano solos, and various kinds of chamber music.  Also a highly respected conductor, Welcher has made guest appearances with a number of leading professional orchestras and ensembles in the US, and was for ten years Assistant Conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

 Dan Welcher has won numerous awards and prizes from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation (a Fellowship in 1997), National Endowment for the Arts, The Reader's Digest/Lila Wallace foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet The Composer, the MacDowell Colony, The Corporation at Yaddo, the American Music Center, and ASCAP.  From 1990 to 1993, he was Composer in Residence with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra (Donald Johanos, Music Director).  His orchestral music has been performed by more than fifty orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, and the BBC Symphony.   He has held prior teaching positions at the University of Louisville and the Eastman School of Music.  Dan Welcher holds the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at The University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches Composition and serves as Director of the New Music Ensemble.  He is also the host of the weekly radio show “From The Butler School” on KMFA-FM.

 For further information, please visit www.danwelcher.com