Faculty Focus: Dr. Daniel Perttu

DANIEL PERTTU A LIFE IN COMPOSITION

By MEGAN SIMPSON ’19

Music is an experience.

It is to be performed, felt and created throughout every stage of the process. Music bridges gaps as we interpret on individual levels while also experiencing it with others, enabling us to integrate it into our lives. For Dr. Daniel Perttu the essence of what music is composes the lines of his life.

Perttu, associate professor of composition and music and chair of the School of Music, always had the desire to create his own music. Growing up, he performed with different ensembles as a bassoonist and pianist, but the idea of creating his own compositions never faded.

“There was always this impulse to come up with something new,” Perttu said.

Throughout college, composing still compelled him and drove his career decision to not stray from music. He focused on composition and refined his voice as a classical music composer throughout his graduate and doctorate programs.

Now as a classical music composer for mainly orchestras and bands, Perttu’s pieces have been performed in Europe, Asia and South America as well as across nearly 40 different states in America. In 2017, he released an album on which the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra performs his overture “To Spring,” which was also performed by the Falcon Symphony in Venezuela, the Firelands Symphony Orchestra in Sandusky, Ohio, and several different orchestras both nationwide and worldwide.

“You get to experience what performers, who you’ve never met, do with the notes you give them,” he said. “They will interpret it a certain way and convey their musical interpretations and often discover things about my music that I hadn’t put in there consciously.”

As a professor, Perttu creates his own compositions regularly and includes his students in his process, enabling them to play his pieces in concert and learn as musicians through the eyes of a composer.

“I love to involve my students in my music,” he said. “I’ve written a number of pieces that have involved Westminster students, so it’s really exciting to be able to blend all these aspects of what I do.”

In this way, Perttu has made his music appealing to a range of audiences, which is something that he strives to do as an artist.

“I try to write it with the idea of keeping the music accessible to people,” he said. “I like my music to have broad appeal. Sometimes I think ‘classical’ music has a stigma of snobbishness associated with it, and one of my causes in life is to try to destigmatize it and to help people to get to know how wonderful it is without all of the baggage. That’s one of the reasons I’m a professor—to expose students to this wonderful world of music.” S