Meet Daniel Weidlein | Music Maker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Daniel Weidlein and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Daniel, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
Woof. This is a hard one! I’ve spent most of my life not giving a care in the world about work/life balance. I would work non-stop, 7 days a week, often ’til 3 or 4 in the morning. And then my “balance” was taking a couple weeks off to go on some kind of grand adventure. I don’t regret a second of it. But I’m learning that as I get older, that model is completely unsustainable. Not that I don’t still try…but now I get tired at 2AM instead of 4AM. And the biggest change in this respect has been marrying a beautiful, inspiring other half who has an incredible sense of work/life balance and is constantly challenging my notion of “this thing has to be accomplished RIGHT NOW.”

What if, in fact, that thing won’t blow up overnight and will be able to be accomplished in exactly the same way tomorrow? Whoah. Sounds simple, but it’s been revolutionary for me. I’ve always operated really well under stress and on a tight deadline. I like finishing a task. And so staying up until the task was finished was always a way to be hyper-efficient. When I know I have to finish the thing before I go to bed, it creates a deadline for me.

So, the big earth-shifting choice I’ve been trying to make more and more is to let tasks go uncompleted, emails left unread, etc. etc. And it’s working. I now have in my email signature a line that lets people know that I don’t respond to emails between 11PM and 9AM. I can get space from my phone and computer in that time to decompress, center myself, and sleep. I don’t always accomplish the goal of ENDING at 11PM…that’s nearly impossible as a musician. But it’s creating a new framework for me to build new habits from.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’m currently diving back into my work as a composer after focusing the last couple years on work in the recording studio and some touring work. My current projects are multi-disciplinary chamber works that combine jazz and classical harmony with dance and other visual elements. I write music that allows for group improvisation (both with musicians and dancers) but also has moments of true classical, fully written movements. While this is certainly not unique in and of itself, I think my music is relatively rare in that it is accessible to a wide range of audiences despite living in spaces that often feel esoteric or stilted.

One of the pieces I’m most excited about right now is called “From The Ashes” and is a chamber suite for jazz quintet, string quartet, English horn, and a small dance ensemble. The piece explores the emotional relationship to forest fires and forest ecology, and chronicles a cycle from harmony in the forest, to human intervention, through forest fire, and then what happens on the other side.

What I’m most excited about, and what makes the piece especially unique, is that every performance will be accompanied by a talkback with ecologists and land conservationists to talk with the performers and audience about the intersections of art and conservation work, how the art may have opened up a new emotional lens to view difficult ecological conversations, and allow for audiences to learn more about the ecology of where the piece is being performed. We will be workshopping this full process for the first time in Sonoma, CA in April, and I hope to bring the piece in full to LA and other cities in 2025.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Rumor has it that the Blue Whale is coming back…my favorite place to listen to music of all time. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed!

I love to show people the nature that surrounds LA. People visiting so often think about the material and human aspects of Hollywood, but I love to show them the Angeles Forest. To show them the amazing view of downtown through the trees in Elysian Park. To crest the hill at Kenneth Hahn State Park and see the ocean come into view. We are so lucky to have so much natural diversity in the greater LA area, and it doesn’t get old being reminded of that.

And then also tacos. We gotta do a taco crawl, always. And it has to include the original Guisados in Echo Park.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I have to shout out my dear friend and collaborator Ryan Amador. We have been writing music together since 2014, have toured the country, written for other artists, and otherwise shared in a whole lot of life together. Ryan constantly challenges me on my instincts about music and about life, but always does it with an incredible sense of love and empathy. He’s one of the most incredible songwriting collaborators I’ve every encountered because he combines an innate sense of great pop melodies with a deep understanding and compassion for the people around him. You can share a life story with him and he’ll find just the right way to get to the heart of the matter through song. And I’ve learned so much from him in that respect. I often find I can do a similar thing through a harmonic lens, he does it through a melodic lens, and then we collaborate to find the right words to go with that. I cherish that collaboration and hope we keep writing music together until we’re old, withering men!

Website: www.biosoulmusic.com

Instagram: @danielweidlein

Image Credits
Taryn Dudley