About

Fox at rehearsal with his collaborator, Gabriela Vainsencher. Photo by Nikolai Fox.

Daniel Fox is a composer and a mathematician. He was born and raised outside of Philadelphia.  He received a BA in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Hampshire College (2000) and a PhD (2005) in Mathematics from Duke University. After receiving his PhD he studied flamenco guitar in Seville with Juan del Gastor.  He was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at UC Irvine and a National Science Foundation International Research Fellow at Oxford University.  His mathematical research focuses on calibrated geometry and integrable systems.  He has published in the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society and Communications in Analysis and Geometry.

His music has been performed by Either/Or, the Momenta Quartet, Contemporaneous, Miranda Cuckson, and Imri Talgam. His writing has appeared in Perspectives of New Music, Hyperallergic, and Van Magazine. He currently studies composition with Suzanne Farrin. His previous composition teachers include Jason Eckardt, Maurice Wright, Matthew Greenbaum, Jan Krzywicki, Andrew McPherson, and Phillip Cooke.

Fox’s compositions have been described as “strongly imagined” and “driven by propulsive counterpoint” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker). In 2013 he received the Presser Award to collaborate with the visual artist Gabriela Vainsencher on The François Vase, a work for string quartet and video. The work was performed by the Momenta Quartet in New York and Philadelphia. Fox recorded piano improvisations for Vainsencher’s limited edition video, Reconstruction, which premiered at the Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre, France and is now part of the museum’s permanent collection.

He completed graduate work in music composition at Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University while teaching as an Assistant Professor in the Mathematics Department at Community College of Philadelphia from 2011-2014. In fall 2014 he entered the PhD program in composition at CUNY Graduate Center. His dissertation research investigates the role of acoustic resonance in the music of Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. He teaches courses in electronic music, composition, and (Western classical) music appreciation at Baruch and Hunter Colleges. During January 2018 Fox will teach a project-based course at Williams College on experimental music and sound-art.