He is a double bass player, composer and arranger born in British Columbia, Canada who started by playing the piano when he was four years old. It was much later when he he was in college that he started studying the bass. Changing his subject to music rather than engineering he went on to attend the University of British Columbia and Juilliard School and earned his masters degree in music.
After graduation he went on to spend four seasons with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and was the Assistant Principal Bass in the Milwaukee Symphony for 12 seasons from 1982/3.
In 1995 he became a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has appeared on the CSO‘s MusicNow series and with their ensemble Cinco. He has also been involved with the Lullaby Project which assists mothers writing and performing songs and music for their children.
He is a founder of the ensembles Tafelmusik and Present Music and still performs with them when he can. Another ensemble he performs new music with is Milwaukee based Jason Seed Elixir String Quartet or Jason Seed Stringtet which is made up of members of the Milwaukee and Chicago Symphonies.
As a composer he has performed one of his own compositions with the Milwaukee Symphony.
Recordings he has performed on include Lost Frontiers and 500 Nations: A Musical Journey by Peter Buffett, Brahms: Violin Concerto/Sonata No. 3 by Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Narada Nutcracker by Narada Artists, The Escapist by Jason Seed Stringtet and the movie soundtrack Lincoln.
His wife Judith Harway is a professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
Sources:
- https://cso.org/about/performers/cso-musicians/strings/bass/daniel-armstrong/
- https://doublebassblog.org/2007/08/dan-armstrong-and-the-jason-seed-elixir-ensemble.html
- https://myspace.com/elixirstringquartet
- https://www.cymc.ca/alumni/daniel-armstrong/
- https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoSymphony/photos/cso-bass-dan-armstrong-second-from-right-leads-student-musicians-in-an-orchestra/10156346357228049/
- https://www.discogs.com/artist/8920807-Daniel-Armstrong-4