Dan Campolieta is a pianist and organist from Hartford with a wide array of musical skills. Dan has performed professionally in a variety of styles including jazz piano, classical piano and organ, pop, instrumental and vocal chamber music, klezmer, classic and contemporary Broadway, rock covers, and wedding music. His current working chamber trio has performed in Europe. Dan’s musical interests range from historically informed early music, to the most avant-garde, and everything in between. He has established himself as an authority on “bookend” music, having concertized with early music, as well as the music of Hindemith, Rorem, Crumb, Ives, Pärt, Messiaen, Bernstein, Lauridsen, Nadia Boulanger, and others.
Dan received a B.M. in Organ Performance and a B.S. in Music Education from the University of Connecticut in 2008. Dan serves as Organist and Associate Music Director for Asylum Hill Congregational Church. There he directs the children’s choir, youth band, bell choir, and other ensembles. An avid composer of jazz music and classical chamber music, recent commissions include compositions for the 26th General Synod of the United Church of Christ, the Annual Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival at Asylum Hill Church in Hartford, and William Hall High School in West Hartford through the Goldfarb Memorial Trust. Dan’s compositions and arrangements have been performed in Montreal, QC and Sevilla, Spain, as well as the Hartford XL Center, in Bushnell Park, at many prominent churches including Arlington St. Church in Boston, Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, and South Church in New Britain, and by professional ensembles Voce, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and the Princeton Singers, as well as by several public schools.
Dan is an in demand accompanist for classical and Broadway singers, choirs and other ensembles, and solo instrumentalists. He teaches private piano, jazz and composition, and has served for several years as the Music Director and Accompanist for the Simsbury Summer Theater for Youth in Simsbury, CT. He also has experience as a vocal coach and is on staff for the prestigious Ensign Darling Vocal Fellowship for High School students in the Hartford area. Dan is the director of Hall High School’s select women’s choir, Voce di Coeli, a 24-voice ensemble that performs throughout Connecticut and tours biennially.
As a singer, Dan has performed with both of Connecticut’s premiere professional choirs: Voce and Concora. Dan is a member of the Voce Chamber Artists and is featured on piano in this ensemble on the latest Morten Lauridsen CD, Sure on This Shining Night: Voce Sings Lauridsen, released in June of 2010. His teachers and mentors include Larry Allen, Angela Salcedo, Earl MacDonald, Peter Kaminsky, Steven Sametz, Chen Yi, Eric Rice and Kenny Davis. He has twice received a prize from the Charlotte Hoyt Bagnall International Scholarship for Organ and Music Ministry and was the co-winner of the L. Cameron Johnson Organ Prize in 2003. He has participated in master classes with organist Paul Jacobs and Marie-Claire Alain.
Through Dan’s studies and professional career, he has played behind jazz greats Tom Harrell, Rufus Reid, Joel Frahm, Rob MConnell, Steve Davis, Chick Corea, and Wynton Marsalis. He is currently the pianist in Conga-Bop, a Hartford based Latin Jazz ensemble led by percussionist Ed Fast, and the pianist in the Tom Bergeron Quintet, an ensemble which interprets classical repertoire in a creative jazz-influenced chamber setting.
