Daniel Lorrain is a guitarist and composer currently based in Madrid, Spain.
Born in New Orleans (Metairie, 1987), Daniel grew up in south Mississippi in a Spanish-American household where he was first exposed to two different folk music traditions that would later shape his development as a creative musician.
A passionate educator, Lorrain was awarded the Jazz Education Network’s prestigious David Baker Scholarship for “demonstrated talent, spirit, and commitment to the field of jazz studies” at the 2011 JEN conference.
While an accounting student at Louisiana State, Lorrain began to study with music theorist and jazz guitarist Dr. John Bishop, then a Ph.D. candidate in music theory. Lorrain continued to earn a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from the celebrated program at the University of New Orleans where he studied with Steve Masakowski, Hank Mackie, and Brian Seeger and attended masterclasses and participated in clinics with Peter Bernstein, Lionel Loueke, Steve Coleman, and Roy Hargrove among others.
While at UNO, Lorrain led the New Orleans Jazz Institute’s Saturday Music School where he taught advanced music theory and directed the school’s big band. In June of 2011, Daniel conducted the school’s big band at Tulane University as they performed his arrangement of Harold Battiste’s classic “Me & Willie T” at the 50th anniversary celebration of AFO Records.
In 2010, Daniel performed the music of Kurt Weill with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra in a pair of concerts as part of the Orchestra’s 2010-2011 Chamber Series
Upon completion of his Master’s in 2011, Lorrain was invited to stay at UNO to continue teaching the non-major guitar course he had developed as a GA, a class he taught until leaving New Orleans.
In the summers of 2011 and 2012, Daniel studied flamenco guitar in Madrid with guitarist Flavio Rodrigues, and his compositions began to combine the complex rhythmic claves and guitar textures of flamenco with contemporary jazz harmony.
In October of 2012, Lorrain was invited to the Universidade Estadual de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to give a series of lectures and masterclasses on jazz harmony, history, and right-hand nylon string technique. During the visit he also lectured at the Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros and at the Conservatório Estadual de Música Lorenzo Fernández. A year later, Lorrain would be invited to return to Belo Horizonte to give a seminar on jazz at Dr. Ronaldo Cadeu's Sala Sinfonietta Belo Horizonte.
Also in 2012, Lorrain formed The Dan Lorrain Band as a creative outlet for his songwriting, which is strongly rooted in the folk traditions of south Louisiana.
From 2013 to 2016, Lorrain lived in Madrid and immersed himself in the study of the flamenco guitar. He studied with Aquilino Jimenez “El Entri,” Spain’s leading educator of flamenco guitar technique and transcribed a complete flamenco “guitar method” collecting hundreds of technical exercises and reflections on the pedagogical techniques of the the flamenco guitar oral tradition.