DE ARAKAL Daniel

Daniel de Arakal has an established reputation as a scholar, performer, and advocate for music education. Through his teaching work in primary and secondary education, development of a nationally recognized guitar curriculum, and creation of repertoire for guitarists of all ages and skill levels, Daniel is dedicated to expanding the reach of and access to the classical guitar, its immense repertoire, and its rich history.  

Daniel studied several musical instruments before discovering the guitar at age seventeen.  It was at this age when Daniel began working with his first teacher, Nic Nichol, who introduced Daniel to the world of classical guitar. Shortly thereafter, Daniel enrolled at Chapman University, where he studied under Jeff Cogan. Upon completing his bachelor’s degrees in guitar performance and composition, Daniel enrolled at the University of Southern California. Here, he earned a master’s degree in classical guitar performance while studying with Martha Masters and Scott Tennant and performed in master classes with renowned guitarists such as Pepe Romero, Shingo Fujii, and Denis Azabagic.

It was during his studies at USC that Daniel began arranging music for guitar. Daniel’s desire to expand the repertoire for guitar ensemble led him to arrange piano and orchestral works by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich, Claude Debussy, and more. Additionally, Daniel began to study the lute tablature of Silvius Leopold Weiss, and has created several classical guitar transcriptions of these tremendous works.

In 2013, Daniel began teaching group and individual guitar classes at Chapman University and, in 2015, began serving as the guitar program coordinator at the Orange County School of the Arts. It was at OSCA that he designed and implemented a Guitar Foundation of America certified curriculum, exemplifying the GFA’s standards of excellence in guitar education, in addition to teaching classical guitar history, arranging, composition, and performance for junior high and high school students.  In conjunction with his educational work, Daniel serves as Vice President of the Orange County Guitar Circle, one of Southern California’s largest classical guitar societies.