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Daniel Colson is pursuing his PhD at CUNY’s Graduate Center, where he studies with Jeff Nichols. A dedicated serial composer, he began his musical studies in Newburyport, MA at the musically suggestive age of 12. Before then he had know nothing of music besides his grandmother’s ragtime piano and his uncle’s jazz guitar. After trying his hand at those two instruments, he was convinced by a desperate jazz band director to play double bass. This terribly low instrument captured his heart. He became a classical bassist at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, MA, where he was persuaded by his eventual composition teacher, Whitman Brown, to write some music. Colson soon dropped his bass and bow for a much lighter pair: paper and pencil. He earned his BM and MM in composition at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Samuel Adler and Milton Babbitt. His music has been premiered in the United States and in Germany, by Cultures in Harmony, Cygnus Ensemble, the Juilliard Orchestra with Jeffrey Milarsky, Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Second Instrumental Unit, and by students at the Universität der Kunst in Berlin; it has been performed in masterclass with the American Brass Quintet, and at such venues as Avery Fisher Hall, the Goethe House German Cultural Center in New York, and the Stone. Colson teaches as an adjunct at Hunter College and Queens College.