Daniel Chetel, D.M.A.

Daniel Chetel is a conductor, music educator, and writer based in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Accessible Orchestral Repertoire: An Annotated Guide for Community and School Orchestras (Rowman & Littlefield), published in 2020 and program note annotator for multiple arts institutions.

He served as the Director of Orchestral Activates and Assistant Professor of Music at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL where he directed the Augustana Symphony Orchestra and the Augustana Chamber Orchestra which collaborated with Opera @ Augustana on annual chamber opera productions. Dr. Chetel moved to the Quad Cities in 2016 after concluding his five-year tenure as the Music Director and Conductor of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras in Lexington, KY where he led a youth orchestra program including six performing ensembles and three community-based programs serving nearly 400 students from 12 counties and 60 area schools. In addition, Dr. Chetel served as the Conductor of the UK Philharmonia, the all-campus symphonic orchestra at the University of Kentucky School of Music. Dr. Chetel has also served on the staff of the Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra as Interim Conductor of the Youth Symphony and Youth Philharmonic Orchestras, the two most advanced orchestras of the Quad Cities Symphony Youth Ensembles.

While living and working in Lexington Dr. Chetel served as the Assistant Conductor for the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, UK Opera Theatre, and the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras. Dr. Chetel led the UK Symphony Orchestra at subscription concerts, educational outreach concerts, and special events such as the Opening Gala of the Confucius Institute at the University of Kentucky. In addition, Dr. Chetel has served as the Conductor of the UK Opera Theatre’s Annual Undergraduate Production, Cover Conductor for the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, and guest conductor of the Reading Symphony Orchestra in Reading, PA. Dr. Chetel has also served as Cover Conductor for summer concerts of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra as well as Assistant Conductor for the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games held at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY.

A strong believer in equitable access to high quality music education, Dr. Chetel worked for the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras as Program Coordinator for the BYSO’s Intensive Community Program, a rigorous stringed instrument curriculum serving underrepresented youth throughout Boston. In the summer of 2008 Dr. Chetel traveled to Acarigua, Venezuela to work with a nucleo of the nation-wide Venezuelan Youth Orchestra System, El Sistema. During his time at the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, Dr. Chetel developed the program North Limestone MusicWorks, an El Sistema-inspired string training program in the underserved North Limestone neighborhood of Lexington, KY.

As an operatic conductor Dr. Chetel has worked for DiCapo Opera (NY), University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, University of Maryland Opera Studio, Newton Symphony (MA), Dunster House Opera Society (MA), and the Reading Symphony Orchestra (PA), where he has worked on fully-staged productions of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte, Puccini’s La Boheme, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, and Vaughan-Williams’s Riders to the Sea, among others; and world premiere operas by Thomas Pasatieri and Joseph Baber.

Originally from Massachusetts, Dr. Chetel holds a B.A. from Harvard University, an M.M. from the University of Maryland School of Music, and a D.M.A. in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Kentucky School of Music where his doctoral research addressed the publication and performance challenges of Hans Krása’s children’s opera Brundibár.