Daniel Lentz passed away in Santa Barbara, California this past Friday at the age of 83. He had relocated near his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania last year and more recently suffered a catastrophic heart event followed by a metastatic cancer diagnosis. Though weak, he was able to make it back by train to the West Coast, where his daughter and son-in-law live, to spend his final days in hospice.
Daniel’s list of accomplishments and innovations in the contemporary classical, new music, and electronic composition fields dates back to the mid-1960s, when he was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship in Electronic Music and Musicology. He was touring choral and keyboard works that incorporated live electronics as early as 1974. Some of this work was documented by Unseen Worlds on Lips, an essential anthological collection released last year.
Daniel eventually linked with fellow West Coast composer Jim Fox for his first release on the latter’s Cold Blue imprint. That 10″, included in an incredible series of young composers, and his debut album on Cold Blue, Point Conception, alongside his two other albums of that era—On the Leopard Altar (released on Yale Evelev’s Icon label, well before he started Luaka Bop) and Miss Umbrarum—represent a high and wildly prolific mark in the postminimalist canon.
Daniel would later collaborate with Harold Budd and Ruben Garcia (of Repetition Repetition). Several decades later, I had the idea to pair Daniel with Ian William Craig for the sixteenth volume of FRKWYS. Daniel’s ease early on in our conversations signaled a love for life, and an indication of the adventurous spirit that compelled so much of his work—the very quality I was so infatuated with. The results of Daniel and Ian’s collaboration are some of the most aching and elegant in the series, if not the label’s entire catalog.
Communication following the FRKWYS collaboration was infrequent but always so friendly. I often had to pinch myself that I even had a line to a musical hero like Daniel. He will always hold that place, and his music will eternally resonate ~
Photo credit: Betty Freeman
