Dan Welcher (born March 2, 1948) is an American composer, conductor, and music educator.

Biography

Welcher was born in Rochester, New York and earned degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, studying bassoon, piano, and composition. He served the Louisville Orchestra as its principal bassoonist and taught composition and theory at the University of Louisville from 1972 to 1978. He also taught composition and bassoon at the Aspen Music Festival and School from 1976 until 1990. In 1978, he joined the faculty of the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin, where he founded the UT New Music Ensemble. During this time he also served as the assistant conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1980 until 1990. Welcher's compositions include concertos, symphonies, vocal literature, piano solos, and various kinds of chamber music. He also wrote two operas, Della's Gift, which premiered in Austin in 1987, and Holy Night, which premiered in 2004. Della's Gift has been performed with several opera companies including the New York City Opera. His works have been performed by such ensembles as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Honolulu Symphony, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. His music is published by the Theodore Presser Company, among others. Recently completed works include Personal Ads: Eight Cabaret Songs, which is a song cycle for piano, soprano and tenor, and the Fifth Symphony, premiered by the Austin Symphony Orchestra on May 1, 2009. Welcher's numerous accolades include awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. For several years, Welcher hosted a weekly radio series called Knowing the Score, aimed at introducing listeners to contemporary classical music. Welcher held the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at the University of Texas, teaching music composition, and served as director of the UT New Music Ensemble until his abrupt departure in 2019 following numerous allegations of sexual misconduct as reported in a September 26, 2019 article in VAN Magazine.

List of works

Orchestra

Wind band

Chamber music

Keyboard

Opera

Vocal and choral