Daniel Gary Busby became infatuated with music, singing and acting at a very young age. His mother was a big band singer in her youth and his grandfather could play multiple instruments. On his father's side of the family, his grandmother was able to play anything she heard by-ear.

At approximately three years old, Busby woke his parents one Sunday morning and advised them that he had had a dream and in that dream he was told to tell his parents that they were to buy him a piano so he could "be rich and famous and play the piano on TV." It took several years of childhood insistence, but, at the age of seven, he did get a piano and began lessons with a local teacher. Musicality and innate knowledge of musical line seemed to come naturally to the young boy. His "good ear" got him into trouble early on because his lessons (which he taped) allowed him to mimic his teacher's playing and so reading music came much more slowly.

As a child of older parents, Busby was reared on a regular diet of big band, swing, and classical music as well as images of movie musicals. He loved to play for his mother--though they frequently fought about her constant desire to modulate in the middle of a phrase when the melody went out of her comfortable range. Busby began coaching singers at about ten or eleven years old. Being innately bossy, he always knew that there was a "better way" for someone to be singing and phrasing. Not much has changed. Busby sang in choruses and acted in plays in high school but was frustrated that his singing voice was not as mature as he wanted. Luckily, he had the good fortune of connecting early on with great vocal teachers like Jane Paul and Ruth Golden. They helped him develop his sense of freedom of the voice and, with Miss Golden, he learned much about the physiognomy of singing and release of tension held in the jaw, tongue, shoulder, back and feet.

Conducting began to hold fascination for the young musician and he conducted everything and anyone who would let him. This included conducting in Europe, South America as well as the United States with choruses and orchestras alike. Still, he knew that he "didn't know enough" because he was vexed with anxiety about "making it go." While studying at UCLA for his doctorate, he was lucky enough to meet emeritus professor Samuel Krachmalnick (who Busby considers his true musical father) and his wife, the esteemed dramatic mezzo turned dramatic soprano, Gloria Lane. Over the course of his completing his degree, Busby would spend time with these great musical beings, including summers with them on Lopez Island, in Washington where he ate, slept, and learned the real art of conducting, singing, and music making in a 19th century model. From Krachmalnick and Lane the worlds of opera, symphonies and musicals opened up and he began to realize that he, himself, was the "link" to a bygone era. The truth that music making is difficult because it is so "simple" was the essence of his learning. To this day, Busby tries to make singing and making music as simple as possible for his students. Borrowing from Pablo Casals idea "the most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all" Busby has shaped a pedagogy that allows singers and musicians to use their instinct and innate abilities to be "musical" and sing "from the heart" in order to "move people." Because, as he learned from Gloria Lane, "we sing from desire."

All performing is based in desire--and that desire is what fires an audience to connect with the performer and the performance. Busby has taught at both USC and UCLA and is now on the musical theater faculty at UCIrvine, where, he is at home making music with talented colleagues and students who allow him to bring his particular passion and desire into their work regularly. He has recently been connected to the OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL working with Bill Rauch and an amazingly talented acting company who have embraced him and his style so completely that OSF has become a second home to him.