Daniel Charles Zipin is an American conductor and music educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Daniel is the newly appointed Music Director of the Morgantown Community Orchestra (MCO) in Morgantown, WV, where he leads the orchestra through standard and contemporary symphonic repertoire. As part of his role with the MCO, Daniel also leads the MCO Youth Strings program, giving orchestral performance opportunities to young students in the Morgantown, WV area. A 2023-2024 Conducting Fellow for the Allentown Symphony Orchestra (Allentown, PA), Daniel served as a Cover Conductor for the orchestra's season-opening Classical Concert under the baton of Music Director Diane Wittry. Daniel's work in Allentown came after serving as a Cover Conductor with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic (Scranton, PA) and the Lexington Philharmonic (Lexington, KY), upon invitation from Music Director Mélisse Brunet.
Daniel is a graduate of West Virginia University (WVU), where he received his Master of Music (M.M.) in Orchestral Conducting. While at WVU, Daniel served as the Assistant Conductor of the WVU Symphony Orchestra, Conductor of the New Music Ensemble, and assisted with the conducting course sequence for undergraduate music majors. Prior to his appointment in West Virginia, Daniel was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Iowa, where he served as Music Director of the Campus Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor of the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra, in addition to being Head Librarian for the orchestra department. Previously, Daniel served as Music Director of the Buckeye Philharmonic (Columbus, OH), where he lead the orchestra through a period of artistic and organizational growth.
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A devoted advocate for music education, Daniel is the sole secondary-level music teacher at the California Area School District in Washington County, PA, where he directs curricular and extracurricular music ensembles for grades 7-12. Previously, Daniel has collaborated with the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra Chamber Strings, the Preucil School of Music, and took part in the planning of educational events at the Nationwide Children's Hospital and the Voxman Music Building as a featured conductor. Additionally, Daniel is the founder of The Instrumental Music Project, an acclaimed educational platform for young students and families that originally took off during the pandemic. Daniel's pedagogically-focused composition, Summer Suite, was a finalist in the National Flute Association's Newly Published Music Competition in 2021.
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A regular attendee of conducting workshops across the United States, Daniel has worked with the Saratoga Orchestra (Whidbey Island, WA), the Boise Baroque Orchestra (Boise, ID), musicians from the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and professional freelancers from around the country under the tutelage of conductors Diane Wittry, Anna Edwards, Robert Franz, Kenneth Kiesler, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya. Daniel's primary conducting teachers are Rotem Weinberg, Mélisse Brunet, and Miriam Burns.