“Dan Cosley is a real, gifted musician with genuine skills as a composer. He belongs to a restricted community of guitarists who place music even above the guitar.”– Roland Dyens
“Exceptional qualities as a performer, scholar, and human being…a very talented and accomplished composer and improviser.” – Ricardo Iznaola
Dan Cosley is an American guitarist, composer, and author whose work moves fluidly among classical tradition, jazz improvisation, and experimental music. A former protégé of Ricardo Iznaola and Roland Dyens, Cosley has performed internationally, premiering original works across North America, Europe, and Japan.
Cosley lived in Japan for 11 years, an immersion that proved central to his artistic formation. During that period, he composed for film and television, working with directors and major studios including Toei, while absorbing an aesthetic world that continues to inform his approach to sound, space, form, and restraint.
His catalog encompasses more than 40 published titles, ranging from solo and ensemble pieces to genre-crossing arrangements, The Art of Canon, an ambitious 15-volume exploration of modal counterpoint, and The Voice-Leading Atlas, an eight-volume series on chord voicings and contrapuntal connection. Drawing on Renaissance polyphony, jazz harmony, free improvisation, and algorithmic composition, his music reflects a voice shaped by historical craft, cross-cultural experience, and experimentation.
On record, Cosley’s discography is similarly expansive. His albums range from solo guitar works to electroacoustic improvisations and ensemble collaborations, exploring the instrument’s capabilities across styles, cultures, and centuries.
After returning to his hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, Cosley became a director at Northeast Iowa Community College, where he oversees programs across the college’s eight-county district. He also serves on the music faculty at Loras College as an adjunct professor. Alongside his administrative and academic roles, he continues to compose, record, teach, and perform, pursuing a lifelong investigation of the guitar’s expressive range.
Long Biography
Dan Cosley is an American guitarist, composer, and author whose work moves fluidly among classical tradition, jazz improvisation, and experimental music. Known for his inventive musical voice, improvisational fluency, and distinctive contributions to contemporary music, Cosley is recognized for a rare combination of interpretive, compositional, and improvisational abilities. He was a protégé of the renowned guitarist-composers Ricardo Iznaola and Roland Dyens.
Born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1979, Cosley was shaped early by Chicago’s musical currents, whose creative traditions (blues, jazz, free improvisation) became central to his artistic outlook. He studied early with the Emmy Award-winning guitarist and composer Jamie Guscafré, who introduced him to the classical guitar, particularly the Cuban and South American repertoire. Through Guscafré, he met and was deeply influenced by Roscoe Mitchell, the saxophonist, composer, and founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM).
At the invitation of the Rome Festival, Cosley made his European debut in 2000, performing music by Heitor Villa-Lobos and Joaquín Turina. In 2005, he received a dual master’s degree in classical guitar performance and composition from the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver. During three years of graduate study, he worked closely with Ricardo Iznaola and served as his graduate teaching assistant. He also studied technique, repertoire, and chamber music with Jonathan Leathwood and Masakazu Ito, and composition and orchestration with then visiting professor Samuel Adler.
At Lamont, Cosley became the first guitarist to win the school’s Concerto Competition, performing the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto, and the first student to premiere an original concerto as part of a degree recital. While in Denver, he also premiered works by Stephen Goss and Gilbert Biberian under Jonathan Leathwood’s guidance. He was the second recipient, after Leathwood, of the Ricardo Iznaola Scholarship and received the Graduate Recital of Distinction award.
After completing his graduate studies, Cosley relocated to Tokyo, where he joined the Tokyo Guitar Ensemble. He appeared at numerous festivals and concert series throughout Japan, premiering works for the ensemble by prominent guitar composers such as Roland Dyens, Benjamin Verdery, and Atanas Ourkouzounov.
Cosley also became a fixture on Tokyo’s improvisational scene, collaborating with Samm Bennett, Norihiko Hibino, and Mike Rivett. He performed frequently at some of the city’s leading music venues, including SuperDeluxe and Nakano ZERO.
In 2010, Cosley became the third non-Japanese composer, after Andrew York and Roland Dyens, to receive the prestigious commission for the Japan Guitar Ensemble Association’s annual gala concert. Les Productions d’OZ published the resulting work, Waltz Triptych. He was later elected the association’s first non-Japanese director. This role included writing articles, arranging music, overseeing numerous publications and recordings for Gendai Guitar, adjudicating competitions throughout Japan, and appearing at festivals including the Shonai International Guitar Festival.
After the 2011 earthquake in Japan, Cosley relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he initially worked for Oregon Catholic Press as a staff engraver and editor of masses, motets, and Gregorian chant. From 2012 to 2016, he served as Professor of Music and Director of Guitar Studies at Marylhurst University. He also taught at Portland Community College and served on the board of directors for Classical Revolution PDX.
In Portland, Cosley designed and taught numerous university courses, including applied classical and jazz guitar, music theory, orchestration, notation, music technology, music history, and composition, and directed several ensembles. In 2013, legendary luthier Robert Ruck asked him to demonstrate two new instruments in a solo concert devoted to the music of J. S. Bach and Francesco Canova da Milano.
Cosley has long maintained a deep interest in traditional Japanese music, particularly the koto music of Tadao Sawai. In 2016, Oregon Koto Kai commissioned Deep River, a trio for two 13-string kotos and 21-string bass koto. The work premiered at Portland State University during the ensemble’s fifth-anniversary gala concert.
During his Portland years, Cosley was mentored by the multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood. He organized a free-improvisation concert and masterclass series featuring guitarist Marc Ribot, and performed on sessions for producer Michael Hoppé, former head of A&R for PolyGram Records.
From 2017 to 2022, Cosley lived in Kyoto, Japan, where his work centered on composition, improvisation, recording, and developing his online teaching platform, wayoftheguitar.com. While in Kyoto, he co-founded Cosmic Fugue, an improvisation concert and workshop series, with the trumpeter and cinematographer Christopher Fryman. He performed extensively with bassist Dave Moss, and Yasutaka Okada of Kott.
In Kyoto, Cosley performed regularly at leading venues, including UrBANGUILD and RAG, collaborating with leading musicians and Butoh dancers. He also scored films and television episodes for Japanese studios, including Toei, working with directors such as Minami Goto and Ryoma Masumoto.
In addition to his substantial output as a recording artist, Cosley has authored more than 40 published titles, including original compositions and arrangements with the Canadian publisher Les Productions d’OZ and the Japanese publisher Gendai Guitar, as well as self-published textbooks on music theory and improvisation. His published arrangements include works by Beethoven, Ellington, and Monteverdi, and his solo electric guitar arrangements of Charles Mingus’s music have attracted considerable acclaim.
In 2022, Cosley studied constraint-based and algorithmic composition at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. His interest in computer-assisted composition led to the publication of The Art of Canon: 254 Two-Part Inventions, a 15-volume series of Renaissance-influenced, two-voice modal counterpoint for flexible instrumentation.
Cosley relocated to Seattle in 2022, continuing his wide-ranging work as a performer, improviser, composer, recording artist, and educator while teaching at Edmonds College. He performed and recorded with leading figures in the city’s creative music scene, including trombonist and conductor Christian Pincock, and drummer and composer Matt Jorgensen of Origin Records. In Seattle, Cosley performed as a member of the Scrambler ensemble and formed the band Known Senders with the bassist Sam Hallam.
After returning to his hometown of Dubuque, Iowa, Cosley became a director at Northeast Iowa Community College, where he oversees programs across the college’s eight-county district. He also serves on the faculty of Loras College as an adjunct professor of music, continuing his long-standing work in education. From Dubuque, he continues to compose, record, teach, and perform work that bridges classical tradition, jazz improvisation, and experimental sound.
