ABOUT

Curious about music, storytelling, and the natural world, Daniel Walter is a strikingly original and collaborative composer and pianist who seeks to capture the essence of story and idea through sound.

He has composed music for over fifty film, television, and experimental video projects, including Ari Aster’s seminal silent short film MUNCHAUSEN, additional music for NBC’s hit thriller THE BLACKLIST, lead composer on Tom Brady-produced docu-series RELIGION OF SPORTS, and a prismatic score for a 33-foot-wide triptych experimental video installation about oceanic research at Scripps Birch Aquarium as part of Getty’s 2024 PST ART, the largest art event in the United States.

Daniel also fosters a burgeoning solo musical practice investigating our relationship with the natural world. In 2024, he was artist in residence with the Bureau of Land Management in the Eastern Sierras, recording soundscapes from the Sierra headwaters all the way down to the Los Angeles aqueduct to the city itself. The subsequent work, WATERFALL, will premiere with live shows in Bishop and Los Angeles in winter 2024, culminating in a permanent soundwalk installation in Alabama Hills near Lone Pine. Prior to this, Daniel spent a 2022 composer residency trekking across remote Alaskan glaciers to develop a chamber piece that later premiered at New York’s Federal Hall. In 2023 he performed several site-specific garden concerts of original music as part of international duo OMOYA alongside Japanese singer and sound artist Maya Hall.

Recognition from colleagues includes being one of 12 composers chosen from 300 applicants for the 2012 ASCAP Film & TV Scoring Workshop; a nomination for a 2014 Jerry Goldsmith Award; participation in the 2022 Composing in the Wilderness composer residency in Wrangell-St Elias National Park, Alaska; and a 2024 artist residency with the Bureau of Land Management in California’s Eastern Sierras. Daniel has also lectured on film scoring at UCLA and LMU.