Daniel has spent his entire life exploring the performing arts. He has a life long goal of understanding the underlying connectivity between human beings. 

 

His first experience on the stage was his elementary school concert band, where he played the clarinet. After a few years of study, he added the Alto Saxophone to his repertoire so he could join his middle school jazz band. He later played in the marching band, jazz band, wind ensemble, and pit orchestra. When Daniel joined his high school production of Brigadoon, he found his way forward. He was in love with singing, and telling a different kind of story. He quickly signed up for voice lessons and joined every choir the community had to offer. He taught himself guitar and started a garage band that played at local house parties and community events. At eighteen years old, he moved to New York City to study theater at Marymount Manhattan College, where he would eventually earn his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting. There he studied theatrical revolutionaries such as Meisner, Uta Hagen, Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, as well as iconic classical theater playwrights such as Checkov, Ibsen, Sophocles, Wilde, Miller, Pinter, Beckett, and Shakespeare. Favorite theater credits include Picasso in Picasso at Lapin Agile at the Middlebury Town Hall, singing in the Barber Shop Quartet in Weston Playhouse’s production of Music Man, and Gar(Public) in Terry Schreiber’s Off-Off broadway production of Philadelphia, Here I Come.

    

Shortly after graduation, Daniel began to explore his newest passion, the wonderful world of film. Through film he has been fortunate enough to film commercial campaigns for companies such as Nintendo, Coca Cola, Pepsi, NFL, Frito Lay, Burnett’s Vodka, Tsingtao, and Victoria’s Secret. Most recently Daniel can be seen in his first feature length film, the biopic Madonna and the Breakfast Club, which details the early days of Madonna, and her transition from dancer into a singer/songwriter. The film currently sits at Amazon’s second most popular documentary of 2019. 

    

Daniel is co-founder of Make Shift Productions, a short film company that focuses on personal experimentation and education through the medium of film. Four of the last five short films have won accolades and awards at the Film One International Film Festival in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. In the fall of 2021, Make Shift Productions will premier Chaffee Falls, a short film written and directed by Mr. Leonard.

  

Daniel holds a Professional Certificate in Music Theory from Berklee College of Music, where he was awarded the Celebrity Apprentice Scholarship for promising young musicians.  Daniel is currently obtaining his Master of Arts in Music and Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. He actively works to explore and teach the language of music, one that helps us express ourselves and connect with one another. Whether as a writer, a performer, or a teacher, Daniel's primary goal is to support one another as we seek to expand our understanding of our individual and collective connection to the arts.