biography

Daniel was raised by multi-instrumentalist ethnomusicologist mother Judith Cook Tucker, founder of World Music Press. So it’s no surprise that his musical journey has been multifaceted, and his path strewn with instruments – alto and soprano saxophone, flute, trombone, baritone horn, fiddle, djembe, guitar, piano, voice, hang, harmonium, tabla, and a nose flute. He began studying music in utero, absorbing everything from Michael Jackson’s Thriller to Jean Pierre Rampal’s golden flute. Throughout his childhood in Danbury, Connecticut, he focused on jazz saxophone, also dabbling in piano to record love songs for a high school girlfriend on an 8-track digital recorder. While at Brown University in Providence, Daniel clung to the clavé while playing saxophone at local dives with a Latin jazz combo led by an elderly Cuban trumpeter.

After three semesters of college, Daniel caught the spiritual-search bug from Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and Thich Nhat Hahn’s Peace is Every Step. A semester break for traveling turned into extended leave, as he found his way to a community of westerners studying Tibetan Buddhism in Kathmandu, Nepal. For two years Daniel tried to be a good Buddhist, meditating and studying scriptures, learning the Tibetan language and going on silent retreats. There was just one thing missing… Music!

Having returned to the states for a family reunion, Daniel pulled his saxophone out of its dusty case, and began to play. And play, and play, and play. As he drank from the well that his life as a musician had built, he realized that music-making was his path. Not long after, a young American spiritual teacher named Narayana turned him onto Krishna Das, and encouraged Daniel to make devotional music at his sat-sangs.
Today, Daniel lives in Berkeley, California, in a musician’s collective in the hills. He leads kirtans around the bay area, often accompanied by vocal-rocking soul-sister Aletha Zsido. Daniel and Aletha bring a love of soul and rock music to their passionate singing of kirtan, and encourage freedom of musical expression in their chant gatherings. Since moving California in 2005, Daniel has studied jazz piano and voice with Michael Smolens, blues piano with Aaron Blumenfeld, vocal technique with Jane Sharp, North Indian classical singing with Rita Sahai, and West-African percussion with Hadley Louden. He has sung alongside Dave Worm and Bryan Dyer in a jazz a cappella ensemble called ‘Mirabai,’ played keyboards and sung harmony in a San Francisco based rock band The Coincidence, and is one of seven hang-drum players in an annual Hang Gathering concert series.

Daniel currently studies North Indian classical singing with Shweta Jhaveri, whose main teacher was Pandit Jasraj of the Mewati gharana. Daniel teaches harmonium and voice privately and in group workshops, and holds beginning harmonium classes as part of Jai Uttal’s bi-annual kirtan camps. He also makes live music for yoga classes with harmonium and hang-drum, a new kind of steel drum from Switzerland. To catch word of these and other events, join Daniel’s mailing list: