Headshot of a smiling man with short, sandy hair and stubble. He is wearing a collared shirt and dark pullover.

John Daniel Clay

( He/Him/His )
Lecturer Faculty
Composition
Email: dannyclay@sfsu.edu
Location: Creative Arts Building Room 161
Office Hours:
Thu: 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Office Hours: Thursdays, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

https://sfsu.zoom.us/my/dannyclay?pwd=bTJVV2dRQUVpeUYvdXA3RlZaaUJCQT09

Danny Clay is a composer and teaching artist whose work is deeply rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and the sheer joy of making things with people of all ages and levels of artistic experience. ​Working closely with artists, students, and community members alike, he builds worlds of inquiry, play, and perpetual discovery that integrate elements of sound, movement, theater, and visual design. Games, speculative systems, cognitive puzzles, invented notation, found objects, imaginary archives, repurposed media, micro-improvisations, and happy accidents all make frequent appearances in his work.​

Recent projects include the Bell Ringers, a community music piece for 100+ musicians and non-musicians in collaboration with Third Coast Percussion and the People’s Music School of Chicago, and Echoes, a spoken-word opera created with Kronos Quartet, the Living Earth Show, and six poet-performers from Youth Speaks. 

Other collaborators include Eighth Blackbird (in partnership with the Modlin Center for the Arts at the University of Richmond), the San Francisco Girls Chorus, 826 Valencia, Volti, Wu Man, Sarah Cahill, Phyllis Chen, and printmaker Jon Fischer. 

As an educator, he recently designed and implemented a seven-week program for 180 third graders in collaboration with Kronos Quartet, and has taught music composition classes at Stanford University and San Francisco State University. As a facilitator specializing in using games for musical education and creativity, he has led workshops for all ages at K-12 schools and university programs throughout the United States.