greetings!
Daisy Waters is a contemporary classical percussionist, composer, pianist, and songwriter specializing in solo and chamber percussion literature and a wide variety of genre-bending compositions for percussion and other instrumental and vocal disciplines.
Daisy has created an emergent career as a solo and chamber percussionist, having recently performed an immersive intermedia recital entitled Buried in the Earth's Eternity. This project combining percussion music, art, poetry, cosmetics, and staging is the second in a five-year narrative known as The Concentric Universes Project, a follow-up to 2024's Voices Heard Through Water. Daisy is also a founding member of Kismet Percussion, a quartet which has given performances as part of its members' recitals throughout 2024 and 2025. Daisy performed in masterclasses for Katarzyna Mycka, Juan Alamo, Third Coast Percussion, Jessie Montgomery, Josh Graham, and other leading figures. She also appeared as a semifinalist at the 2023 Great Plains International Marimba Competition, and performed alongside Sandbox Percussion and the Metropolis Ensemble at Sandbox’s 2024 Summer Seminar in New York. She has commissioned works by established and emergent composers, including Dr. Fusun Köksal, Dr. Kerry Hagan, Dr. Greg Simon, Athena Carson, Na’ilah Ali, and Devin Brown.
At the University of Illinois, from which she has graduated with a Master of Music degree, Daisy has appeared with a wide variety of performing ensembles. In addition to professional appearances with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony, the Sinfonia da Camera, the Danville Symphony Orchestra, and the Lyric Theatre @ Illinois Orchestra, she has also performed with the UI Symphony Orchestra and Wind Symphony, as well as the Percussion Ensemble, Hip-Hop Collective, Latin Jazz Ensemble, and the Illinois Modern Ensemble who recently premiered Ilya Demutsky’s new opera Black Square with the Lyric Theatre Program. She recorded four works including three world premieres with the Illinois Wind Symphony for future album release. In Daisy’s studies at the University of North Texas, she appeared with the North Texas Wind Symphony, where she can be heard on their 2023 album releases Respair and Closure, as well as UNT’s Wind Orchestra, Percussion Ensemble, South Indian Ensemble, Brazilian Ensemble, Steel Band, and Gamelan. She has shared the stage with Steven Schick, She-e Wu, Mark Ford, Noriko Tsukagoshi, William Moersch, Julian Bliss, Paquito D’Rivera, Andy Narell, Corky Siegel, Alonza Lawrence, Hub New Music, and other world-renowned soloists.
Daisy is also a fervent composer, having authored more than 150 original works and arrangements for a variety of instruments and performance settings. Her oeuvre includes two string quartets, a concerto for percussion, original works for wind ensemble and orchestra, over five dozen works for solo and chamber percussion, and two collections of hip-hop music. Daisy’s works have been commissioned and premiered by professional and student musicians alike, including Dr. Matthew Lau, the University of Illinois Percussion Ensemble, the University of Illinois Steel Band, the UNT South Indian Ensemble, Noah Avelar, Tanner Day, Trevor Landreth, Chase Dunaway, Baryl Brandt, Jacob Thompson, Fourward Momentum, Katie Grace Stephenson, and others. She is also the composer for a yet-to-be-released short film written by Catheryn Kuhar and directed by Izabella Kleinfeldt.
Daisy has studied with William Moersch, Dr. Josh Graham, Ricardo Flores, Mark Ford, Paul and Sandi Rennick, Dr. Dave Hall, Ed Smith, Poovalur Sriji, and Steve Barnes. At the University of Illinois, she held a position as the Percussion Studio’s Teaching Assistant, where she managed inventory and rehearsal logistics and taught Percussion Methods to undergraduate Music Education students and lessons to non-Percussion majors.
Outside of her musical endeavors, Daisy enjoys spending time with her partner, watching superhero movies and television shows, album listening, studying mathematics, playing Magic: the Gathering, collecting vinyl figures, physical media, and soda cans, and learning everything there is to know about hair care.