My story

I started on guitar at eleven. The next year I tried my first brass instrument, the euphonium, and it was a very long year. It was not the best of attempts. In seventh grade at Westwood Middle School I picked up the saxophone instead, and it was a much better fit. I never put it down after that.

Growing up, I was in everything: musicals, choir, band and sports. Before I learned the saxophone I was already rewriting song lyrics, and my first mentor had one rule: no microphone and no seat with the band until I had learned every key, and learned it with real confidence.

At Totino-Grace High School I played and sang in everything I could: concert band, jazz band, woodwind choir, Encore show choir as a singer and dancer, Company of Singers as a musician, jazz combo as a musician and arranger, men's chorus, and brass choir on trumpet.

Then I became the pep band's arranger, and that is where I learned every instrument I wrote for, mostly through trial and error in rehearsal. The flutes got tired of repetitive eighth notes. The trumpets told me when something was too high. Some chords were spelled enharmonically, and a few B-sharps slipped into the parts before I went back and fixed them.

My band director, Tim Hoffman, let me spend every lunch period of my junior and senior years in his office. He showed me Finale and how to work with HyperScribe, and I researched my favorite artists and songs. One selection at a time, I replaced the pep band book with newer songs built for the moments that mattered during games.

It gave the athletic band experience so much newness, flavor and updated repertoire. In his defense, the music offered in JW Pepper, or as I call it, JW “Salt,” for many reasons, lacked diversity and culturally appropriate styling, and the arrangements did not match the flavor of how the songs were written. Writing our own was the answer, and it set the course for everything I've arranged since.

At Gustavus Adolphus College my course of study required a primary and a secondary instrument. In my sophomore year I picked up the trumpet to study with Dr. Steve Wright, and I took voice lessons as well.

Over four years I played tenor saxophone and drums in Jazz II, alto II and then alto I in the Jazz Lab Band, and I performed with the Vasa Wind Orchestra. I sang in men's chorus, Chapel Choir and the Gustavus Choir, performed in the J-Term show choir, and played drums for the summer camp show choir. I had little room to compose and arrange during those years, though I wanted it badly. That hunger came with me into the classroom. I graduated with my degree in music education in 2015.

In 2005 I joined an international worship ministry as a teenage saxophonist. Over twenty years my role grew into music direction, composition, arranging, education and ministry leadership across many instruments and ensembles, and I still handle audio and visual production for that ministry today.

In 2015, the year I graduated, I was named Director of Worship Arts, leading the full worship arts program, from choirs and an orchestra to a music institute and instrumental ensembles. It's where I wrote original songs including God Wants a Yes and In All the Earth.

At Minneapolis Roosevelt High School, the first American school I taught at, I worked alongside band director Nick Wilson and my education mentor, Dr. Adrian Davis, who led band, choir, drumline and classroom music. Dr. Davis showed me what it means to navigate education today as a Black man. He pushed me toward graduate school, and he was the first example I had of seeing a “bleacher” Black male teacher in action. What I learned from watching him changed what I believed we could do, be and create.

At an inner-city school in South Minneapolis, we built with minimal operating budgets, grant funding for the basics, a lot of fundraising and a lot of teacher time. We competed with programs that had endowments, boosters and established budget lines, and there was nothing our program could not accomplish. Our drumline performed at the Super Bowl Experience in Minneapolis in January 2018. We brought our concert choirs to the Mall of America in 2017, and premiered a performance at the Minnesota Music Educators Association that same year.

Working with our arts coordinators and administration, we brought in new Casio keyboards as workstations for an in-house studio. My general music courses became Intro to Music Production and Intro to DAWs, and our science teacher helped upgrade every computer with enough memory to run GarageBand.

I built Piano I. Then students and families advocated for more, so I wrote the curriculum for Piano II / Advanced Piano and presented it to the district arts and curriculum coordinator, who approved it for registration. Students who began the year with no piano or music-reading experience finished reading the grand staff proficiently, composing, improvising, sight-reading and playing grade 1.5 to 2 repertoire, with every major and minor scale, arpeggios and etudes as part of daily instruction and assessment.

Returning to Westwood Middle School, the school where I first picked up the saxophone, was an incredible part of my teaching career. In 2019–2020 I taught 168 fifth-grade beginning band students in weekly group lessons of five to fifteen, and co-taught 240 sixth graders in sections of 30 to 40, each ensemble preparing and performing its own works.

For our first concert in February 2020, all 168 fifth graders took the stage together. Weeks later, the COVID pandemic interrupted the year.

From Minneapolis Roosevelt and Westwood, the work continued at DeLaSalle High School, at Tartan High School, where THE CULTURE became the identity of the athletic band, and with the University of Minnesota Marching Band. Every concert I led included an original composition or arrangement.

More of those stories are coming soon. For now, the highlights are on my About page.

I play soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, piano, keyboard and Hammond B3 organ, along with nearly every instrument in the band and orchestra. My music lives in jazz, gospel and contemporary soul, and I compose, perform and produce my own projects.

My EP Breath of God (2020) led to the 2021 Gospel Music Choice Award for Instrumental Artist of the Year, and I've performed alongside artists including PJ Morton, Nachito Herrera, Jovonta Patton, Kenny Holmen, Wyn Starks and the Campbell Brothers. In June 2024 I moved to Dallas to build full-time as Daniel James Collective.

I write for the ensemble in front of me: its strengths, its identities and its sound. As a composer I've written pieces for Spring Lake Park High School and Westwood Middle School, the district where I grew up as a musician, and for Totino-Grace High School, where I first learned to arrange, as well as Hopkins High School and Coon Rapids High School. That work includes my first commission, Snow Day, Moonlight Groove, premiered by the Spring Lake Park High School Jazz I ensemble in 2018, and Freedom Suite for the band at Hazel Park Preparatory Academy.

My arrangements, including the opening, hip-hop and R&B medleys from The Culturally Conscious Classroom, put the music people live with at the center of the ensemble. Commissions are open for collegiate, community, worship and professional ensembles.

All of the editorial writing at Cut Times is mine. As Senior Writer, I cover The Journey, Good Music, Editorials, Music Today and Education, written from inside the profession rather than from press releases.

It began with Paper No. 1, Where It All Began, the moment I had to decide whether I simply wanted to instruct music or become a musician educator. New pieces go up every week, and every one is logged on my Updates page.