Critic Royal S. Brown, writing in High Fidelity in 1974, called Dan Welcher “one of the most promising American composers I have heard.” Welcher, now fifty-three, has been steadily fulfilling that promise ever since. With over eighty works to his credit, more than half of which are published, Welcher has written in virtually every medium, including opera, oratorio, concerto, symphony, wind ensemble, vocal literature, piano solos and various kinds of chamber music. Also a highly respected conductor, Welcher has made guest appearances with a number of leading professional orchestras and ensembles in the United States and was for ten years assistant conductor of the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

Dan Welcher has won numerous awards and prizes from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Reader’s Digest/Lila Wallace Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet The Composer, the MacDowell Colony, The Corporation at Yaddo, the American Music Center and ASCAP. From 1990 to 1993, he was composer-in-residence with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra. His orchestral music has been performed by more than fifty orchestras, including the Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas Symphonies. His recent large works include two new wind ensemble pieces completed in 2000; an orchestral work commissioned by the Utah Symphony Orchestra entitled Zion, premiered in Salt Lake City in September 1999; an overture entitled Spumante, commissioned by the Boston Pops and premiered by that orchestra under its music director, Keith Lockhart, in May 1998; an oboe concerto entitled Venti di Mare premiered in February 1999 by oboist John Snow with the Rochester Phi! lharmonic under Peter Bay; and JFK: The Voice of Peace, an hour-long oratorio for narrator, solo cello, chorus and orchestra, premiered by the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra and Chorus, with cellist Paul Tobias and narrator David McCullough, in March 1999. Dan Welcher holds the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Professorship in Composition at The University of Texas at Austin.