Dr. Daniel Ketter is Assistant Professor of Cello at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. He is also Co-Director and co-founder of the American Wild Ensemble (www.musicintheamericanwild.com), which seeks to celebrate the people and places that define American communities with new music. In 2018, American Wild Ensemble released a two-hour album of eleven original works on the ArtistShare label, including an hour-long music video album. With support from the National Endowment for the Arts, these works were commissioned and performed for a tour of seven national parks celebrating the centennial of the National Park Service in 2016. Since 2016, AWE has collaborated with nine different national parks and historic sites.

 Daniel completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where he served as Alan Harris’s teaching assistant. As a teacher, he created and led a technique class for undergraduates in the studio and continues to give lectures and coachings at the Eastman Cello Institute. In Rochester, Daniel also taught cello and chamber music at the Hochstein School of Music and Dance and co-coordinated their Chamber Music Connections Program. He founded the Eastman Cello Ensemble, which has given performances for “Live at Hochstein” broadcast on the radio by WXXI and for “If Music Be the Food…” benefiting Rochester’s Foodlink. 

 Currently, Daniel is a doctoral candidate for a PhD in Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music. Daniel has an MM in cello performance and pedagogy from the Peabody Conservatory, studying with Alison Wells, and graduated with high distinction from both the Eastman School of Music (BM ’10, cello performance) and from the University of Rochester (BA ’10, mathematics).