Timely music from Daniel Alexandre ’19

Matthew Allen, Professor of Music and Coordinator of Asian Studies

My advisee and friend, Music major Daniel Alexandre ’19 arrived at Wheaton College already steeped in music making, having been active in his Boston area church band and the popular music field since his early teens. The first time I met him I think he was playing piano, guitar, and bass, all with equal talent and fluency! Word soon got out amongst his peers about his musical skills, and he proved himself to be as generous with his time and expertise as he was talented.

He became the go-to person on campus to fellow students who asked for help be it as a sideman for a jazz quartet, accompanist for an R&B singer, bandleader for a gospel choir, composer or producer for student singles or albums, or technical advisor for arranging, orchestration, and audio recording.

I really got to know Daniel’s talents and his generosity of spirit when he was part of a Wheaton summer class “Arts in Ireland” I taught in Ireland in June 2018, a class which focused on musical and artistic composition. There were a half a dozen music students on that trip, every one of whom went to Daniel for technical assistance and artistic advice over the course of those three weeks. Daniel never hesitated when presented with the many requests that came his way. He must have spent as much time helping other students with their projects as he spent on his own work, in which he wrote adventurous compositions inspired both by Irish traditional tunes and Indian ragas and talas.

In those sessions I saw him push himself to understand challenging and unfamiliar musical forms. By the time he graduated from Wheaton College, Daniel was continuing to grow in all areas of his musical education, going deeper into the technical nuances of music production, creating a sound design for a new album of a colleague’s collection of poems, and other ambitious projects – showing beautifully how there are truly no maps on Daniel’s taps.

The song ‘What We Say’ was composed by Daniel in the spring of 2020. Read this interview to learn more about the inspiration for Daniel’s song:

What We Say (Interview with Daniel Alexandre)

Since his graduation from Wheaton, Daniel has made his home in New York, where he continues to compose and produce his own musical compositions, while also having enrolled in the graduate study program for Crisis and Reputation Management at Hofstra University.