Daniel Godsil's music, which has been described by the San Francisco Classical Voice as having an “intense dramatic narrative,” draws from such eclectic influences as science fiction, thrash metal, and Brutalist architecture. His more recent work draws inspiration from the natural beauty of Northern California, his current home.

Winner of the 2019 League of Composers/ISCM Steven R. Gerber prize (for Cosmographia) and the 2017 Earplay Donald Aird Composition Competition (for his quartet Aeropittura), Godsil's music has been played by Spektral Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Talujon Percussion, Daedalus Quartet, Lydian String Quartet, Empyrean Ensemble, Metropolitan Orchestra of Saint Louis, UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, University Symphony Orchestra at California State University Fullerton, Knox-Galesburg Symphony, Secret String Quartet, and the Nova Singers, among many others. Recent film scores include the PBS documentary Boxcar People, Man Ray’s 1926 silent film Emak-Bakia and the feature film H.G. Wells’ The First Men In The Moon. Godsil was a finalist in the 2018 Lake George Music Festival chamber composition competition, as well as the 2014 and 2019 Red Note New Music Festival Composition Competitions. His choral works are published by Alliance Music Publishing and NoteNova Publishing, and his chamber and orchestral music is published by BabelScores in Paris.

Born and raised in central Illinois, Godsil (b.1982) holds his PhD. in Composition and Theory from the University of California, Davis, where he studied with Pablo Ortiz, Mika Pelo, Laurie San Martin, and Sam Nichols. He holds an MFA in Music Composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he studied with John Fitz Rogers, John Mallia, and Jonathan Bailey Holland. He also holds a BM in Music Composition from Webster University.

Godsil was selected to participate in the 2017 Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP) in Boston, where he had master classes with composers Nicholas Vines and Georg Friedrich Haas.

Godsil has also been active as an educator, conductor, and performer in the central Illinois area, Knox College, Monmouth College, and Carl Sandburg College. At Knox College, he directed the New Music Ensemble, Wind Ensemble, Chamber Ensemble, and Men’s Chorus. He has also held posts as choral accompanist and collaborative pianist, and served as Music Director and Organist at Grace Episcopal Church in Galesburg, IL.  

Godsil is a professor of music at Columbia College in Sonora, California. He has also served as artistic committee president for Ninth Planet New Music, a trailblazing new music ensemble based in California's SF Bay Area.

Click for a short curriculum vitae (CV) and list of works

Click for a longer curriculum vitae (CV) and list of works

“There was also a decidedly unique voice in Godsil’s “Aeropittura” (aeropainting), a musical response to the call of the Italian Futurists from the first half of the twentieth century. Godsil caught the spirit of of the Futurist fixation on technology as inspiration for art; and he was particularly good at capturing the spirit of old airplane engines in his score for flute, viola, cello, and piano. The composer’s background in heavy metal guitar probably helped him hone that particular skill.”

—Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Room

“No discussion of THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON IN 3-D would be complete without enthusiastic kudos to our composer Daniel Godsil, whose love of the greats – Herrmann, Goldsmith, Williams and Copland – speaks for itself in his work. He is capable of wildly exciting orchestrations of the strange and beautifully composed and orchestrated sensitive melodies when the scenes demand it. Chosen from an open call in every venue we could find for an orchestral composer who could actually deliver what a film of this type, with its lofty aesthetic aims demanded, he was chosen immediately after already culling through over 300 respondents.”

—Films In Review

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