daniel for today and also margaret marko revie who is the orchestra director of the belmont public schools so welcome we've a lot to talk about first of all there's going to be a concert i want to make sure we get this plug in a lot of want to say that this has been made possible by a grant from palm switches parents of music students and a generous grant from the belmont foundation for education so if you are watching out there and you've donated to these organizations you can see right now where your money it's really really important to anything this is great so daniel can you tell me a little bit about i want to talk about your involvement with the high school but also let's start with a little bit about you where you're from and how you've gotten to where you are stuff like that well i'm from south florida small talk of margate florida outside of pompano beach i like to say that in the proud product of the burt county public school system and it's a it's a very simple story and the son of a haitian immigrant i started playing the violin when i was five years old and over oh yeah lessons once a week in  our elementary school much like the belmont schools we had a orchestra program and a wonderful teacher mr miller was his name and i did that through high school and ended up at vanderbilt university nashville and i see ended up at the university of michigan where i completed my doctoral work and about thirteen years ago and it up in harlem in new york city and now i've ended up here and belmont that's pretty much it that's big and what is your doctor again what music composition and theory and have you taught music or is it more what you're doing currently which is obviously playing do it for a living as they say i did spend our last year at my alma mater at vanderbilt university as a visiting assistant professor of composition and it was wonderful i was on the faculty with some of my old teachers former teacher months i'll be in tasmania close to of australia will be some european visit in between this weekend i'll be in dallas texas so there's quite a bit of travelling involved but you know my good thousand people followed by the next night with the vancouver symphony orchestra in orchestra hall so i think that's a really actually i'm glad you brought that up that's a really good example of where a lot of composers are now working with or stras or working in nightclubs or working with d j s working with a virtue also and i think it's symptomatic of probably m t v and going out when you're not supposed to go out and studying hard and just how the fragmentation if you will of classical music and music in general and audiences and what people are wanting and needing and willing to accept and it really all feeds bright back into the concert i'll be doing with belmont where my dear friend margot here has come up with that very ambitious program it's all my music four of my worst spanning probably about fifteen years of creative activity and  an early earlier pieces and some of my most my latest works pieces involving drum kit pieces involving the spoken word so it's very very exciting and you have any c d s  com as well as amazon and i tunes as well and it's wonderful i'm working on a couple of c d s right now and it's you know things are really changing for everybody in every way but as i was telling a good friend of mine sam precocious twelve year old little girl i met just a few moments ago you know it's it's music for me is an antidote you know to toxic certainty the ills of society whatever it is music music sure you know you probably know that it just takes you to a greater place no matter what is going on in society it's true and it's you know i mean i've got my big screen television and i love to stay at home oftentimes i'm on my i phone you know watching the news watching these miners being extract again about of the earth song and so forth but i say you know i tell you coming from a catholic household where you went to church for me going to concerts just like you it's a communal act you know it it's community it's communion and you know tomorrow night it's one of those very rare moments in time where somebody like me can have a deep and meaningful and substance of conversation with somebody like marco i mean look at us the differences come quick and very pretty but what do you share in common yeah you know we are  common thread it really is and there's only one way to experience that you've got to come out and sit down and bear witness sit next to someone you might not know and bear witness and that and that is you know this was one of the traditions of our society that i that we have to maintain we have to maintain and how that is very well said very well maybe the way i said i have to go out and hear music brings in a whole array of performers and daniel was one of the performers that week and so i had a chance to sit in on one of his hip hop filing classes and i was like my kids  through the whole process about what can we do and daniel has a project called the new class coalition which brings his compositions that are geared towards youth orchestras to different schools so through that received in schools do you do mostly high schools or have you done with younger kids well it's always different you know usually it's connected to performances or something i feel strongly about so i'm invited to play you know city arts festival or with this you know with an orchestra i was just with the cincinnati symphony orchestra that's a good example and what i try to do right try to maneuver within my contract is some sort of kind of outreach activity some artists are not willing are wanting to do these things which is fine to their particular in craft i'm very much willing and wanting to do it it's actually a very important part of my artistry and my the how i practice my craft and it keeps me  connected and inspired and i also feel that i owe a particular debt to music education and i keep saying this and one day i'm going to actually sit down and do the research but i have a feeling that there is a connection a direct correlation between the lowering of arts education in our schools and the rides of school violence in our schools i think there's probably a direct correlation and the less we offer arts in our schools it seems the more our children are killing our children killing themselves lest we forget you know i mean i'm thinking about tyler clemente a young man who played the violin who went to an orchestra her school can you imagine and not to get you morbid or anything but this is life hours after speaking with his orchestra director and rehearsing ravello verde or whatever it was he threw himself from the george washington bridge you know any new yorker has passed over that bridge thousands of times so i think about that young man i think about well what can i do where is my responsibility as a composer right and i think that going into the schools by any means necessary yeah is what i should be ticker let's face it as a haitian american composer that is something that i and not only needing and wanting to do i daresay i think i'm uniquely qualified to judge that or not i know th are qualified and i like that you brought that up and i will say and i have had some of them music teachers in belmont on on the show before belmont has been fantastic in the arts program music and arts och the awards are run but beyond that that's great too but i seem to rarely get cut envelopment maybe i'm a little bit wrong on this but it seems to be valued so  much so as a community member it's very comforting to know that the value is placed so much on music in our town and in our orchestras in the band in the choruses would you agree margot yeah  i mean i hope you don't know something i don't know but i'm just you know it it just seems like there's so much great stuff going on especially at the high school i'm sure that the middle school too but when you go to these concerts in the high school this is going to be unique i think yes very unique for you yeah and how have the kids been responding i think the kids are eating it up like they're intrigued by dean you know and i think to bring in somebody that's so different then me in some ways but also daniel has still been talking about very similar our rehearsal procedures or how we think about our music and our performance i think a lot of those are similar but to hear it from somebody else  route of you know boston pops which is fan fantastic love the boston pops or you can meld in a different way like you've done which is you know maybe some of the your orchestra students never even thought that way so yeah that's really cool well you know just two days ago i was with keith lockhart and some of the musicians from the boston pops chelsea high school as a matter of fact we did a very special concert there keefe is such a generous and gracious and he's boston's national treasure get away right and those kids knew who he was and i think that i think what i'm trying to do as a composer and a violinist is to simply say that you know the pilot is one thing my violin is something different with my violin i can have a conversation with anyone more go with you risky flockhart with lady gaga yeah with bill t jones so on and so forth and i think that's really important because i know that when i was growing up dick as a young black person playing the violin was not cool it was something that young girls did specifically young white girls i don't think that's changed and i think along with that particular and specific type of change we're seeing many changes i remember writing a piece once for orchestra with a drum kit and the orchestra librarian called me interested you know we're really excited about playing a piece but but we don't play with dru we don't do drum kits or something so you know there's plenty of drum kits tomorrow night's program and i'm very excited there are four pieces being played how they're all very very different and margot will be conducting two of them i'll be conducting one of and it's really these four pieces and i've never been performed together on the same program since so exciting the program is a world premiere yeah wow and so if for the drum kits for tomorrow students from the wind ensemble which is the select to be and then the high school and we were first at the same time so weekly we are we have a full orchestra her song and so students from the b and program come come down the hall so the majority of because it's true i mean and where i would like to you would never see a male that i like right i feel like we have a lot of male students good i think it's pretty good mix yeah that's good and i'm sure it's very  you know i guess regarded as israel's national anthem what i like to say is that for me by live i'm trying to make violin playing cool michael and he wrote i mean relevant and very relevant i mean real and by real i mean a relationship a relationship to our own playing for whoever's around the teachers politicians yes you know politicians those are the people who really change your life they tell you what direction to go up and down the street i don't know how much change artists can affect per se but you know if it  takes a village yes and i think the village here is really you know wonderful it's servicing the children very very well because i can tell you having traveled to have some communities don't serve their children well yes let's be honest and i'm very excited for what the what those students what and who they represent that's what i see so i don't know how much they get for me or for more i go and of course i had to think marco so much as it all started with margo i had nothing to do with it yeah you know i served my invitation right but those children i owe them a debt they have really this isn't i per believe if they have really kind of changed my life and made me said about you let's see the new york times said that you are about as never us as a contemporary artist gets oh did you know that in the new york times and you were given praises one of the remember a photo shoot i was after i was right before josh bell the wonderful american violinist and i was in the west village of new york city is a beautiful day for exciting you know professional photographers and they these things for me hopefully ultimately serve the music and that's right right anything i can do to get people to come to the concert hall and see me having a conversation with margot and i'm wonderful students and collaborators they're fine that's right i think working with lady gaga on american idol is a really good example where universe wall room is only a couple people hundred people in the room but you know where that camera is going you know you know where that camera is going and i think it's which exactly and that's why i was reading and i mean anyone who talks to him tomorrow when they hear you play will already be thinking these things but it is also nice we live in a society where credibility yes certain credibility does propel people and so for someone who might not have seen you yet if they read that in the times are going to be like oh you know we're not writing him well yeah one of my favorite quotes the one that my you know in hip hop music they often watch you to have to slow you know free flow to do it on the spot to improvise the words so i like that i think that it's a good way to kind of test your mettle and to see what you've got so i thought i might do an improvisation three but i would do the subject so virgil thompson the great american composer used to do musical portraits we would have the subject of the composition sit before a very wonderful i think in about one hundred of his factory so here we go i'd like to do a musical portrait of you or then i don't know you we've just met at a very wonderful conversation yeah but you know your viewers know you your daughters know ye up i'd love to talk to you for hours and hours in the constraints of here so anyway i want to remind people even if they watch us after the fact to check out more of what you've done on d music dot com yes it's easy to remember tomorrow night is the concert at belmont high school seven pm and it's free which is really that's really nice so it's accessible for everybody margo i'm really glad that you took the class in new york that's really great and margot thank you for all the work that you've put into into this because i know it must be in your students were very lucky to have you yes danielle thank you so much for coming on the show for coming to belmont for my my piece beautiful i'm looking forward to the show tomorrow night so i hope everybody