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, hang, harmonium, 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.
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 him 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 with his band Devas and Divas, and studies North Indian singing with Rita Sahai and Shweta Jhaveri. Daniel teaches harmonium, guitar and voice privately, and has led group harmonium classes at Jai Uttal’s kirtan camp. He also plays live music for yoga classes with harmonium and Hang drum, a new steel drum from Switzerland.