Daniel Lentz

Life and career

Daniel Lentz was born on March 10, 1942, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. While studying at St. Vincent College and Brandeis University, he gained early recognition as a musician by earning a composition fellowship at Tanglewood in the summer of 1966. The next year, he received a Fulbright Fellowship in Electronic Music, which he pursued in Stockholm, Sweden, during 1967–68. After that, he worked as a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1968 to 1970, then shifted his focus entirely to composing and performing.

In 1970, he founded the ensemble California Time Machine, which toured across North America and Europe. In 1972, Lentz became the first American to win the Gaudeamus International Composers Award, and he went on to receive several other awards and grants. He later formed and led another group, the San Andreas Fault, which toured North America and Europe performing works including Missa Umbrarum (Mass of Shadows) from 1973, and released multiple recordings in Europe.

After returning to California, he established the Daniel Lentz Group in Los Angeles, an ensemble that toured extensively and put out many recordings. His 1987 album The Crack in the Bell marked the first contemporary classical release from Angel/EMI Records. As a visual artist, Lentz created acrylic sculptures, most notably his Illuminated Manuscript series, which are three-dimensional realizations of a recorded musical work that accompanies each piece.

Family tradition holds that Lentz was of partial Seneca heritage through one of his great-grandmothers. His composition O-ke-wah (North American Eclipse), first written in 1974, is scored for 12 voices, drum, bone rasps, and bells, and is based on a traditional Seneca ritual dance for the dead. Lentz had a daughter from his first marriage and lived in Southern California. He moved back to his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 2024.

After a diagnosis of metastatic cancer, he returned to California for hospice care. He died of congestive heart failure on July 25, 2025, in Santa Barbara, California, at the age of 83.