Faculty

Danielle Ong is currently pursuing her Masters in Music at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) as a Graduate Teaching Assistant under the tutelage of Dr. Andrew Dahlke. As a strong advocate for the arts, her personal musical voice carries strong influences from her Eastern heritage and culture fused with her Western training and experience, aiming to foster unique, personal and cross-cultural experiences with others. Her interest in diversifying her musical experiences has led her to furtherexplore music in the realm of classical and jazz genres, forming an artistic vision and identity that is versatile and multi-faceted in nature.

She is a recipient of the Brian Bayman Scholarship and the Graduate Dean’s Scholarship Award at UNC, the Royal College of Music (RCM) Excellence Award, as well as the 1st place winner in the 2023 Southard Music Competition to name a few.

As an active soloist and chamber musician, she has performed with the Orchestra of Music Makers (OMM), The Philharmonic Orchestra (TPO) in Singapore, the Fort Collins Symphony (FCS), Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra (GPO) and the UNC Compass Jazz Orchestra in the United States.

With her interest in developing the local and international saxophone community, she has

represented the Protege Saxophone Ensemble, the New Meta Quartet and the NAFA Saxophone

Quartet/Ensemble across Southeast Asia in performances and outreach workshops. She has actively premiered and/or commissioned works of various instrumentations by local and international composers. This includes projects like the Global Saxophone Consortium commissioning project with New Meta Quartet and Singaporean composer Dr Zechariah Goh Toh Chai, playing/premiering Singaporean works at World Saxophone Congress XVIII 2018 in Zagreb, Croatia, and working with composers such as RCM’s Head of Composition William Mival. She will also be presenting an all-Singaporean works programme of saxophone quartet music at the 2024 National American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) conference in Oklahoma, USA, promoting Singaporean works abroad.

Believing in the importance of music education and engaging local communities, she has volunteered and tutored at high school band clinics in Denver and Colorado Springs. Her teaching experience also extends to giving undergraduate students at UNC private lessons, quartet coaching and studio classes/clinics as part of her Teaching Assistantship responsibilities.

Danielle has extensive experience as an administrative staff member and joint organizer of the Asia Pacific Saxophone Academy (APSA) since 2017. This includes organizing and facilitating the camp’s lessons, competitions, concerts, masterclasses and recitals. Hosting over 150 international students

and faculty in recent editions of APSA, she has worked with notable saxophonists such as Nobuya

Sugawa, Jean-Yves Fourmeau, Taimur Sullivan and Toshikazu Nagase.