Daniel Koplitz
Praised for their “impeccable music direction” and “exquisite performances” (Shepherd Express, 2019), Daniel Koplitz is a performer, choral conductor, and musicologist-in-training at Stanford University. Their doctoral research explores sacred vocal musics of the Western Middle Ages and Renaissance, particularly those performed and composed in Tudor England (1475–1603).
A native of central Wisconsin, Daniel holds a B.A. in vocal performance from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where they graduated summa cum laude in 2018. During their studies, they sang on scholarship at St. John’s Catholic Cathedral and All Saints’ Episcopal Cathedral, and in 2017, they established and directed the vocal early music ensemble Aperi Animam, presenting over thirty concert performances through May 2021. In May 2019, the ensemble was selected as one of four ensembles and soloists to perform on Early Music America’s Emerging Artists Showcase at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. Later that year, the group premiered Amanda Schoofs’s experimental opera Eternal Burning alongside Orlande de Lassus’s Prophetiae sibyllarum in a critically acclaimed interdisciplinary collaboration with Milwaukee Opera Theatre and Cadence Collective. After graduating, they served as the Assistant Artistic Director of the Master Singers of Milwaukee (2021), the Children’s Choirmaster at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (2018–20), and the Director of Music and Cantor at All Saints’ Episcopal Cathedral (2020–2021).
As a soloist, Daniel has performed the role of Autumn in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen and Aesculapius Carboy in Arthur Sullivan’s The Zoo in addition to the tenor solos in Vivaldi’s Magnificat and the chant solos in Allegri’s Miserere mei Deus. As a consort singer, they have performed early and new music with the San Francisco Renaissance Voices (Don Scott Carpenter), Present Music (David Bloom), and the Madison Choral Project (Bert Pinsonneault) and have participated in ensemble singing intensive courses at the Madison Early Music Festival (Calmus Ensemble), the Boston Early Music Academy (Andrew Carwood), and the Amherst Early Music Festival (Michael Barrett and Pamela Dellal). Supported by scholarships from both Early Music America and the Friends of Music at Stanford, Daniel also participated in the 2022 Professional Choral Institute at the Aspen Music Festival, led by the Grammy-nominated choral ensemble Seraphic Fire.
In March 2022, Daniel established the five-voice ensemble Affeccyon (formerly Neuma) to serve as an outlet for their research in early music at Stanford. The ensemble takes their name from the early modern English affeccyon, which refers to the affective power of music and other sensory practices to orient listeners toward the Divine Good. They look forward to performing Aquitanian chant at Bissera Pentcheva’s AudioVision exhibition on January 26, 2023 in addition to presenting and recording a concert of previously unrecorded music from the Elizabethan “Gyffard” partbooks on May 26, 2023 in Memorial Church.
Daniel currently lives in the Bay Area with their partner and their several dozen house plants. They sing Gregorian chant and early polyphony as a section leader with the St. Ann Choir (William Mahrt) and make frequent appearances as a substitute member of Grace Cathedral’s Choir of Men and Boys. They are a co-coordinator of Stanford’s early-modern focal group Renaissances as well as a member of Early Music America, the American Choral Directors Association, and the American Musicological Society.