Danny Fratina is a composer and trumpet player based in Pittsburgh and Istanbul. His output explores the negative space around human performers and he seeks to integrate transcriptive processes to reveal the humanity behind the instrument. His work ties together improvisation and notation with themes of belonging, detachment, and control, incorporating the textures of coolness and panic, joy and fear, and perfection and disaster. His upcoming projects center around augmented trumpet (motion tracking) and performance choreography-as-music.

His 2022 release Bb, in Isolation, is a collection of capturings of musicians in a moment in time balancing improvisation with the demands of notated music. His work has recently been played by ensembles like Hezarfen Ensemble in Istanbul, the University of Memphis New Music Ensemble, and the Cambridge Philharmonic. His arranging and transcription skills have led to collaborations with the Boston Pops, the University of Sydney, the New York Youth Symphony Jazz Band, the Plymouth Symphony, and the Cape Cod Symphony. He was a transcriptionist for the Harvard University Natural History of Song postdoctoral ethnographic project. In 2023 he founded the Pittsburgh University Composer-Performer Ensemble, and in 2024 his works will be performed by Ensemble Dal Niente and Nat28.

Danny received his MA in Composition from the Istanbul Technical University Centre for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM) in Istanbul, Turkey, and holds a BM in Jazz Composition from the Berklee College of Music. From 2019 to 2022 he was Lecturer of Jazz Composition at the Istanbul University State Conservatory. He now lives in Pittsburgh with his partner ilkim, a brilliant anthropologist, and their dog Köfte, while he works on his PhD in Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh.