Biography
There is at least 2 artists named Dan Becker, one is:
- "Born in 1960, Dan Becker is a San Francisco-based composer whose wide-ranging achievements both exemplify and reflect a life dedicated to new music in America. Becker’s artistic work has been described as “post-minimalist” due to the strong influence of works by Terry Riley, with whom he studied, and other minimalists of the early 1960s including La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Becker is also the founder and Artistic Director of the Common Sense Composers’ Collective, a member of the Board of Directors of the American Music Center, and a professor of composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Becker received his DMA in Composition from Yale University, where he also earned his MM and MMA degrees. His teachers have included Terry Riley, Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Elinor Armer, Poul Ruders and Louis Andriessen. Awards and grants include those from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001), Meet the Composer (2002/2008), American Music Center (2006), Live Music for Dance (2006), the America Composers Forum (2004), and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust (2003). His music has been performed at universities and festivals large and small, across the United States, including the Norfolk Summer Festival, Chicago Arts Series, Park City String Quartet Festival, Bates College American Music Festival, and many others.
The Common Sense Composers’ Collective is an eight-member SF-NYC based composers’ group committed to experimenting with the processes in which music is conceived, developed, and presented. Each year the composers of Common Sense collaborate with a different performing ensemble; past partners have included the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the New Millennium Ensemble, Twisted Tutu, the Dogs of Desire Ensemble, the American Baroque period instrument ensemble, the Robin Cox Ensemble and New York’s Essential Music. Common Sense has released three CDs documenting their projects, and has also produced five editions of their Bay Area New Music Marathon titled OPUS415 (Nos. 4 and 5 presented by Other Minds), a showcase of the diverse voices of Bay Area composers and performers alongside a selection of special guests."
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