Dan Galat is a violinist & violist living and working in the south side of Chicago.
My Practice
I aspire to virtuosity on my instruments, the violin, and the viola. I define virtuosity to be the ability to play as many sounds as accurately as possible, given a set of instructions or parameters. This set of instructions in Western music is called a score. Sometimes, I like to imagine scores all around me: a painting on the wall, or a line of Rumi.
My pedagogical practice incorporates an understanding of childhood development with the goal of community music through the development of our musical identities. Community music for me is music as a common practice uniting a diverse group of peoples and cultures in harmony, sound, and movement.
My social musical practice is the collaboration with others in the production of new ideas, sounds, and scores. My personal practice is both in copying the sounds I hear around me and in a form of personal self-expression.
These are elements of practice and improvisation, and these practices help us listen to the world around us better, making us feel safe being together with other humans.
Missing Piece
Dan is a co-founding member of Missing Piece, a chamber ensemble that commissions and curates new, imaginative works for string instruments and the world around us.
Missing Piece is a south-side Chicago-based musical duo, violinist Dan Galat and cellist Kelly Quesada.
Missing Piece endeavors to commission new musical works and works from other artistic disciplines.
These pieces are centered on themes that inspire connections with community, environmental stewardship, deep listening, and speaking out against injustice.
