Composer/conductor/flutist DANIEL KESSNER was born in Los Angeles in 1946. He studied with Henri Lazarof at UCLA, where he received his Ph.D. in 1971. Kessner has received a number of awards and grants, including the Queen Marie-Jose International Composition Prize in Geneva in 1972, BMI Awards in 1970 and 1971, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Arts International.

His works have been performed in the U.S. – by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Symphony, and others – and by foreign orchestras including the Polish National Orchestra of Poznan, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, the Utrecht Symphony and Netherlands Opera, the Orquesta Sinfónica de El Salvador, the Filarmonica de Stat “Dinu Lipatti” Satu Mare (Romania), the Black Sea Philharmonic (Romania), and most recently the Bohuslav Martinu˚ Philharmonic of Zlin (Czech Republic).

This past year he was appointed Fulbright Senior Scholar for a lectureship at the Musikhochschule in Trossingen, Germany, during which time he participated in eleven concerts all over Europe. On the faculty of California State University, Northridge, for more than 33 years, he is currently in the middle of a five-year early retirement program, which has him teaching every other semester.