Danielle Bees is a composer, orchestrator, and pianist hailing from Southern California. She began playing piano and writing music at the age of thirteen, under the tutelage of her mother. In 2014, she moved to Houghton, New York, where she spent the next three and a half years completing her Bachelor of Music degree at the Greatbatch School of Music at Houghton College, graduating with honors in 2017. In the fall of the same year, Danielle moved to Glasgow, United Kingdom to pursue her second music degree at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. During her time there, she collaborated on many different projects, including film, theatre, and concert music for performance and workshops with notable ensembles such as the RSNO Ensemble, the Edinburgh Quartet, and the Hebrides Ensemble. She premiered incidental music for the new play Rebecca in June of 2018 at the renowned Citizens Theatre in Glasgow as part of the On the Verge Festival and scored the CKF International Film Festival award winning short film What the Cat Dragged In.

Danielle was named a Sofia Symphonic Summit 2023 Composer, an East Chamber Music Festival 2022 Composer, an ICEBERG Institute 2022 participant, an Alba Festival 2021 Composition Fellow, a Composer in Residence for the ICon Arts Transylvania Academy 2020, and a two-time American Prize semifinalist, both in the student choral and chamber divisions for composition in 2015 and 2016. She is an elected member of the Pi Kappa Lambda National Music Honor Society and an S. Hugh and Wilfrieda Paine Scholarship recipient. She has experience writing music for a variety of different ensembles, instrumentations, and mediums, including film and theatre. and her music has been performed throughout North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Danielle has studied composition with Dr. Sarah Hutchings, Rory Boyle, and Dr. Linda Buckley, piano with Dr. William Newbrough and Edward Cohen, and choral conducting with Dr. Adam Luebke and Dr. Daniel Black. She is passionate about the art of storytelling and enjoys writing musical pieces for any and every avenue and working with other performing artists, including actors, directors, and writers alike.

Danielle graduated with her Master of Music degree from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in July of 2019 and is currently based in New York, New York.

Photographs by Chelsea Johnson