Daniel Inamorato
Founder and Director of The Toy Piano Sanctuary & Neurodiversity Music Institute, professor Daniel Inamorato is a Brazilian-American interdisciplinary performance artist teaching at University of William & Mary.
"You may call me Danny"
Working often on the intersection of contemporary keyboard music, Japanese Butoh dance and political art, Danny, as he/she/they prefers to be called, stretches the limits of performance practice in avant-garde art through mind provoking and ambitious projects that aim to redefine the priorities in music, dance, theater and politics.
Most common themes in his research include the history of oppression, absurdity in art, avant-garde art movements, neurodiversity in music pedagogy, keyboard history and performance.
Accomplishments:
- A Jacobs Fellow and Scholar, he performed his first concert with an orchestra at age 9.
- For over twenty years he has had a carrier as a solo pianist, avid music sight reader, highly sought out as a collaborative pianist and teacher.
- He has fashioned the term "gestural mutilation" to define verbal and physical abuse that aims at restricting gestures and motion on bodily autonomy.
- Looking at crisis as an opportunity, he created The Toy Piano Sanctuary & Neurodiversity Music Institute out of a difficult year when the US government delayed and staled the delivery of his work-permit.
- He was the first pianist to make a piano transcription of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bela Bartok.
- He has won more than 40 prizes in piano competitions.
- He has taught thousands of students, many neurodiverse and with disabilities.
- All his music scores have coffee stains, but now he uses an IPad and winks to turn pages.
Why a Sanctuary?
"The goal has always been to become a safe haven. I guess I suffered more than my fair share of abandonment in life, and when I saw all these baby pianos alone in antique shops, I had to put them all in the same room and start a movement. It is my way to create community, to enlarge my family, to keep myself surrounded by love".
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Tell us about all these projects
"Most recently, the composition competition has been taking most of our time. The first year was a test run and very successful. The Human Rights Edition really took off and many people sent us new compositions as an homage to the 49 people murdered at Pulse Nightclub. As a result we also made hundreds of dollars for human rights campaigns all around the World, what is fantastic - one of our goals was to help people develop a habit of donating money to good causes. This new toy piano suite - The Pulse Suite - will be a major part of our yearly performances at Pride events, as a token of love and appreciation for the LGBTQA+ community.​
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I chose a very different theme for the second edition though -Erotica Music - honestly because the music community is extremely boring and conservative, and most of my colleagues give me stick in the mud vibes. I believe we need to talk about taboo topics more often, and I love Erotica Art, so Erotica Music will be our next contribution to the toy piano community. I also have ties to the Kensey Institute, as a Jacobs Fellow I studied at IU, and from much before that I already admired Kensey's work.
