Daniel with Synthesizer

Daniel McKemie is a composer, percussionist, electronic musician, researcher, and arranger based in New York City. His current work includes using techniques rooted in Music Information Retrieval in analyzing the nature of timbre and using such data in creative settings. He also focuses on utilizing the internet and browser technology to realize a more accessible platform for multimedia art. Daniel is currently pursuing his MS in Computer Science and Health Informatics at Brooklyn College, where he works in Professor Johanna Devaney's Laboaratory for Music and Audio Understanding (LUMAA) as a graduate assistant. His music has been performed in Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia; and his research on computer music and web-based audio/composition techniques has been presented and published internationally in conferences such as the Korean Electro-acoustic Music Society, the Australasian Computer Music Association, the International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research, the Society of Electro-acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), and Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), among others.

Daniel also develops new ways of interfacing handmade circuitry, modular synthesizers, and embedded systems to various softwares both new and old. This recent work has allowed for complex, interactive performance environments to emerge, in which software generates compositional processes and actions in the form of analog signals sent to the hardware, and software that can analyze said signals from the hardware to determine musical behaviors.

In addition to electronic music, Daniel is an active percussionist, having premiered dozens of new works for the repertoire, including many with The William Winant Percussion Group. Active as an instrumental composer, he has written for solo, chamber, mixed media, and radio broadcast formats, and also served as an assistant transcriber and orchestrator for Roscoe Mitchell on pieces from his Conversations collection.

His teachers have included Morton Subotnick, Roscoe Mitchell, William Winant, and Pauline Oliveros; and has provided music for and worked with a number of different artists and companies in various capacities including: The New York Deaf Theatre, Larry Polansky, Funsch Dance Experience, Ryan Ross Smith, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, The Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra, Christian Wolff, Bob Ostertag, and Steve Schick.