Dan K. Kurland joins the Wiener Staatsoper as the first Music Coordinator of NEST (NEue STaatsoper).  The new performance space opens in December 2024 in its inaugural season.  This venture is a natural progression in a career which encompasses nearly every facet of music-theater.  

Prior to his engagement in Vienna, he served as Studienleiter (head of music) at Oper Halle.  In addition to overseeing and advising musical preparation of nearly 20 new productions, he especially prepared the casts of Der Rosenkavalier, La bohème, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Rigoletto, Manru, Faust, and Les contes d'Hoffmann, many of which included singers in their role debuts.  Previous work as répétiteur demonstrates an equally broad range of styles and repertoire including Tristan und Isolde, Tosca, Aida, Simon Boccanegra, Tosca, Il turco in Italia, Everest, Dido and Aeneas, Der Graf von Luxemburg, Frau Luna, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, An American Tragedy, and La Cenerentola.  While in Halle, Mr Kurland collaborated with members of the Staatskapelle Halle, notably on their chamber music series in the historic Händel-Haus and as the orchestral keyboard soloist in Honegger's Symphony No. 3 under the direction of Thomas Sanderling.  He assisted conductors Yonatan Cohen, Christian Curnyn, José Miguel Esandi, Michael Wendeberg and especially Michael Hofstetter, with whom he worked closely on Oper Halle and the Händelfestspielorchester's DVD recording of Brockes Passion, scheduled to be released by Naxos in 2025.  He also served as lead advisor on the English-language texts for Adam, a world-premiere musical to be debuted at Oper Halle in summer, 2025.  While in Halle, he founded the Nachtcafé series and was its music director, building on a consistent entrepreneurial spirit that also included curating a Two-Piano Concert Series in the collaborative piano department and serving as founding music director for the annual cabaret at the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts, both at the The Juilliard School.

Mr Kurland began his European career at the age of 21 as a faculty member of the Franco-American Vocal Academy (Périgueux, France) with repertoire focused intensively on French opera and mélodie.  In 2017, he began as Solorepetitor at Theater Hagen.  Highlights of his time in Hagen included serving as assistant conductor for performances of Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem and Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri as well as frequent and varied appearances as pianist in both orchestral and chamber music concerts with members of the Philharmonische Orchester Hagen.  He also was deeply involved in new theater works, evidenced in his first appearance as both Musikalische Leitung and on-stage Pianist for the acclaimed world premiere of Molly Bloom (after James Joyce's Ulysses).  Promoted to Stellvertretende Studienleiter in 2019, he and Intendant Francis Hüsers developed the concept for a new staging of Schubert's Winterreise (for which he served as Musikalische Leitung and Pianist), performed on-stage in Shakespeare's play Ein Sommernachstraum (Squenz/Musikalische Leitung/Pianist), and led recitatives on-stage in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore.


This breadth of experience informs his coaching, often preparing prominent singers on rosters the likes of The Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, and Deutsche Oper Berlin.  His partners on the concert stage have included soprano Julia Bullock, mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms, tenors Miles Mykkanen and Spencer Lang, baritones Stephen Lancaster and Randall Scarlata, violinists Francisco García Fullana, Eric Silberger and Charles Yang, cellist Julian Schwarz, the string quintet SYBARITE5, and actors Shalita Grant, Ernestine Jackson, Michael Kostroff.  As a pianist active in vocal, instrumental, and orchestral repertoires, he has appeared in concert throughout New York (Steinway Hall, The DiMenna Center, The Guggenheim Museum, Caramoor, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall and David Rubinstein Atrium) the United States (Aspen Music Festival and School, Chicago, Texas), Germany (Dortmunder Philharmoniker and the aforementioned Staatskapelle Halle and Philharmonische Orchester Hagen), Austria (AlpenKammerMusik), France (extensive concert tours throughout Nouvelle-Aquitaine), and England (Finalist Prize, 2015 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition).  

He is also a published writer whose articles have appeared in Opera News (2021), Singing: The Timeless Muse (2018), PLAYBILL Lincoln Center's program notes (2014) and numerous pieces in The Juilliard Journal and The Chicago Tribune.  He has been a guest coach and clinician at Chicago Summer Opera, a member of the faculty at AlpenKammerMusik (Austria), The Martina Arroyo Foundation’s Prelude to Performance program (New York City), and given master classes at Juilliard in Aiken (South Carolina) and Columbia University’s Opera Untapped.

At the invitation of director Stephen Wadsworth and Manhattan Theatre Company he joined the 2010 Broadway production of Master Class (Manny Weinstock, u/s) with Tyne Daly staring as Maria Callas.  This work with Ms Daly fostered future collaborations together with the renowned EMMY and TONY Award-Winning actress including a special performance for the opening of FOCUS on The Arts.  

Previous engagements have included Wolf Trap Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, and Music Academy of the West.  He studied collaborative piano at The Juilliard School (Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) and Master of Music (MM)) with Margo Garrett, Jonathan Feldman, Diane Richardson, and JJ Penna, and at The University of Texas at Austin (Bachelor of Music (BM), with honors) where he studied piano with Anton Nel and voice with Darlene Wiley.  Born in Chicago, his first teachers included Svetlana Budilovsky and Kay Kim. In his leisure time, Mr. Kurland enjoys hosting dinner parties inspired by Ina Garten, running, and surveying gin and French wines.