Daniel Carter is the quintessential, American Creative Improvising musician and multi-instrumentalist. He has been making music in New York City since the early 1970s performing on all of the instruments including the saxophones, flute, clarinet, and trumpet. This legendary master of creative improvisation, was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania in 1945.

For much of his musical career Carter was playing 7days a week. Now in his 80’s he only performs 3 times a week!

Back in the early 70s he and Roger Baird formed the collective the Music Ensemble that included William Parker, Malik Baraka, Dewey Johnson, Billy Bang and later Earl Freeman and others.

He was writing long scores for large ensembles but the concept of Free Improvisation that was central to the Music Ensemble formed his musical direction. By the mid 80s he would no longer play any written music. However, his improvisations included all aspects of music particularly melodic structure and his improvisational skill allowed him not only to fit in but indeed, add to different musical settings without being directed. 

Daniel Carter embraced the idea of Freedom. No one is above or below another participant. His approach to music making was essentially non-hierarchical. His non-hierarchal approach meant he was open to all kinds of music including Rap, open experimental, working with dancers and of course FreeJazz. 

Bands that he chose to perform with were collective ensembles. This included Other Dimensions In Music with Roy Campbell, William Parker and Rashied Bakr and TEST with Sabir Mateen, Matthew Heynor and Tom Bruno. From the 70s to the present, he has recorded and performed with William Parker in hundreds of projects. But he also worked with DJ Logic; Thurston Moore; Yo La Tengo; Sun Ra; Cecil Taylor, Cooper-Moore, Sam Rivers, David S. Ware; Yoko Ono, Medesky, Martin and Wood, Jaco Pastorius and Federico Ughi among hundreds of others.  

Much of his music was made with a stream of young musicians arriving in NYC who were interested in “Playing” music with this legend.  Without drawing attention to himself he has quietly and steadily nurtured generations of young creative people.