Daniel Schnyder

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Daniel Schnyder moves fluidly between classical chamber music and avant-garde jazz as a composer, flutist, and saxophonist. He began his training on flute at the Conservatory of Winterthur before relocating to the United States and enrolling at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he focused on jazz arranging, composition, and saxophone. Over time he has collaborated with Lew Soloff, Lee Konitz, Abdullah Ibrahim, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and numerous other artists. Commissions have come to him from the NDR Big Band, the Atlanta Symphony, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Opera of Bern, and the Vienna Art Orchestra. His honors include prizes from the International Trumpet Guild’s Composition Contest, the Zolliker Kunstpreis, the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and the Association Composition Contest.

ENJA Records issued his first album, The City, in 1988. That same year the Modern Art Septet’s Secret Cosmos appeared and drew widespread critical praise. Throughout the remainder of the 1980s and into the following decade Schnyder continued to record for ENJA, releasing Mythology, Decoding the Message, and Nucleus. In 1996 he assembled a trio with pianist Kenny Drew Jr. and trombonist David Taylor; together they created Words Within Music, an album that fuses jazz with modern classical elements into a style unmistakably his own and features the pieces “St. Matthew Passion Suite,” “Winter 1941,” and “Beep-Hop.”