Daniel Basford

Biography

Daniel Basford (b. 1983, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK) is an English composer and musician.

Basford studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music with Dr. David Horne and Adam Gorb. Notable commissions include works for chamber ensembles and orchestra played at several of the RNCM’s contemporary composer festivals in addition to works premiered by the LSO and Britten Sinfonia.

His latest chamber work, Hourglass, for countertenor and harp, was recorded by NMC as part of an anthology of British contemporary songs released in 2009. Daniel has also completed several orchestrations of Rachmaninoff's piano music, in particular Four Preludes (2011) and the Six Morceaux (2008), with both being performed in Hertfordshire.

One of many young emerging composers writing much for concert band, Daniel’s cantata Night Journey was premiered by Hertfordshire Wind Sinfonia in 2009 to great acclaim and is now published by Maecenas Music, and received its first performance abroad in 2012. His Processional Fanfare was a winner in the Dallas Wind Symphony’s 2008 Fanfare Competition, and The Siege of Kenilworth (2011) was selected as test piece for a band contest in Europe. He has recently completed his first symphony for concert band, premiered in August 2013.

As well as composing, Daniel is active as a freelance instrumentalist, playing percussion in several Hertfordshire-based orchestras. He also works as a teacher for Hertfordshire Music Service.

Daniel was the winner of the 2005 Theodore Holland Intercollegiate Composition Prize; the 2005 RNCM Soroptimist Prize for Composers; and was one of three winners in the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2005 Discovery Composition Project. In 2008 he was finalist in the Aliénor Composition Awards for Harpsichord, received an Honourable Mention in the same Contest for 2011, and won 3rd prize in the International “2 Agosto” Composition Contest.

Works for Winds

Resources