ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Daniel Maté is the founder of START SPREADING THE MUSE! He writes all the songs, and performs the majority of the instruments and vocals.

Daniel’s musical influences are all over the map. He has an uncanny ability to play and sing by ear virtually any pop song he’s heard more than once.

Born in 1975, Daniel has been playing and composing music since he was but a lad. To hear his parents tell it, he could harmonize before he could talk. He studied classical piano for ten years, and then jazz and pop in his teens. After graduation he spent a year on a kibbutz in Israel, where he began teaching himself guitar. He began writing songs on guitar as an undergraduate student at McGill University, and performed several solo shows at The Yellow Door, a legendary Montreal folk club.

Upon returning to Vancouver he recorded a CD of original songs, entitled Through These Parts Alone. Daniel was invited to participate in the 2001 Britsh Columbia Festival of the Arts in Fort St. John, as part of a Songwriters’ Workshop facilitated by renowned Canadian songwriters Mae Moore and Ron Hynes .

Daniel is also an experienced stage actor and director who has written and performed music in many theatre productions. In collaboration with fellow Vancouver artists from various disciplines, he helped found the "In The House" Festival, a two-day arts festival where the living rooms, kitchens, basements and back yards of an East Vancouver neighbourhood become art galleries and performance spaces, featuring performances and displays by some of the city's most exciting emerging actors, musicians, storytellers, dancers, and visual artists.

Currently, Daniel lives in Brooklyn, New York, while finishing up his studies at the M.F.A. program in Musical Theatre Writing at New York University in Manhattan. He has studied with such writing luminaries as Lee Adams ("Bye Bye Birdie"), William Finn ("Falsettos"), Rachel Sheinkin ("The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"), and Margo Lion (producer of "Hairspray").