Meet Daniel Black

Montreal-based conductor Daniel Black has earned a reputation as a versatile musician capable of delivering "vital and engaging" performances in a variety of genres and styles, from ballet to opera, standards of the classic orchestral repertoire to Pops, educational programming, and film concerts. Daniel completed a highly successful four-year tenure as Resident Conductor of the Florida Orchestra in 2022. After joining as Assistant Conductor in 2018, he was quickly promoted to Associate Conductor and then Resident Conductor as his contract was twice extended. With The Florida Orchestra, he conducted over fifty performances per season, including Masterworks, Pops, film concerts, Coffee Concerts, Family and Youth concerts, and more. Prior to his engagement with The Florida Orchestra, Daniel served as Assistant and then Associate Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony in Texas, conducting over 150 performances.

In 2026-27, Daniel will return to the Buffalo Philharmonic and The Florida Orchestra, while making debuts with the Charlotte Symphony, the Calgary Philharmonic, and the Santa Barbara Symphony, among other engagements. He is a finalist and candidate for music director of the Idaho Falls Symphony Orchestra. 

Daniel has been active as a guest conductor, having appeared with the Nashville Symphony, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Eugene Symphony, Boise Philharmonic, Kamloops Symphony, West Virginia Symphony, Hamilton Philharmonic, San Antonio Symphony, Tallahassee Symphony, Texarkana Symphony, Savannah Philharmonic, and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, among others.

Also an accomplished composer and arranger, Daniel is the conductor and principal arranger for the orchestra pops show Dreams of Bollywood. His orchestration of Dvorak’s Gypsy Songs, op. 55 is published by Bärenreiter Prague. A recording of this orchestration is set to be released on the Chandos label. Daniel is an associate composer of the Canadian Music Center- Quebec.

Passionate about expanding the core orchestral repertoire, in recent seasons Daniel has led the world premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winner Kevin Puts' triple concerto "Contact" with the string trio Time for Three, the U.S. premiere of Eleanor Alberga's dramatic work "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and has conducted the works of Gabriela Lena Frank, Jocelyn Morlock, Florence Price, Jesse Montgomery, Philip Glass, Jennifer Higdon, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Jimmy Lopez, Lembit Beecher, and more. In 2016, he conducted the Midwest premiere and first professional recording of John Harmon's Crazy Horse Symphony to great acclaim.

Fluent in French and Russian, and having studied at the famed St. Petersburg Conservatory, he has a particular affinity for the Russian repertoire, having led performances of Tchaikovsky's First Symphony, Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Corelli" and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, among many others. In 2022, he conducted Galina Ustvolskaya's little-known gem "Symphonic Poem No. 2" with The Florida Orchestra.

Equally at home in the opera pit, Daniel had a successful debut with Bernstein's Candide at Michigan Opera Theatre (now Detroit Opera), and has conducted the Dnipro State Opera in Ukraine, Coleridge-Taylor's Dream Lovers with Chicago's South Side Opera Company, and Northwestern University opera. In 2017, he was assistant conductor for the China premiere of Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber, touring China with the composer. In 2017-2018, he received opera conducting fellowships from the Solti Foundation U.S.- working with Opera Theatre St. Louis and the Florentine Opera Company, respectively.

Daniel has thrice been awarded the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, and was a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, the Kurt Masur Conducting Workshop, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. He has studied with Kurt Masur, Edo de Waart, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff, Larry Rachleff, Marin Alsop, Daniel Lewis, David Effron, and Gunther Schuller. Daniel has studied conducting at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, and Northwestern University, counting among his mentors Leonid Korchmar, Neil Varon, and Victor Yampolsky. He has studied composition with Richard Danielpour, Ana Sokolovic, and François-Hugues Leclair.