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David B. Daniel conducts the Candler Singers during Candler’s Sending Forth worship service in 2023.
For more than a decade, David B. Daniel has served the Candler community. But at the end of this school year, Candler’s assistant professor in the practice of music ministry and director of chapel music is retiring. His retirement caps off years of affiliation with the seminary that stem as far back as 1988.
Daniel at Candler graduation in 2022.
“Candler is where my father went to school,” says Daniel. “It is where my father was formed in his ministry. He was a second career pastor and earned his master of divinity from Candler in 1988—the same year I graduated from high school.”
From the time he began the graduate programs of choral conducting at his alma mater, the University of South Carolina, Daniel knew he wanted to teach at the college level. He accepted a position at a church in Northern Virginia to “gain experience while continuing to pursue my dream of being a college choral director.” Along the way, he realized he not only had a gift for directing choirs but also lay ministry.
The revelation led him back to Candler, years after his father’s matriculation.
“I discerned that a theological education was an important part of my journey as a pastoral musician. Candler was my only consideration,” he says. “I enrolled at Candler in the fall of 2009, taking only one class per semester.”
Daniel embraces Barbara Day Miller at her 2016 retirement concert.
The following year, Daniel began singing with the Candler Singers under the direction of Barbara Day Miller 88T, associate dean emerita of worship and music and associate professor emerita in the practice of liturgy and music. Following Day Miller’s retirement from Candler in the spring of 2016, Daniel was appointed to his current role as director and assistant professor. He’d served as an adjunct and choral assistant for the Candler Singers for five years at that point.
“My dream of teaching in the academy came true. Not as I had dreamed, but perhaps as God had dreamed,” he says.
While the decision to retire is a difficult one, he knows “it’s the right time.”
Khalia J. Williams, associate dean of worship and spiritual formation and associate professor in the practice of worship, has worked with Daniel for a decade. What she has come to value most is not only his musical excellence, but his consistent generosity of spirit.
“He brings a thoughtful attentiveness and deep artistry to his work that has strengthened our worship life,” she says. “David leaves behind a profound legacy of faithful musical leadership. He possesses a keen ability to recognize each student’s potential and nurture it with joy.”
Daniel directs the Candler Singers during worship.
Ng Tsz Nok Christopher 26T has been part of the Candler Singers for three years. He credits Daniel with reigniting a passion in him for congregational singing. “Dr. Daniel prompted me to reimagine the function and location of the choir in worship vis-à-vis the wider community who gathers. His pedagogy facilitated my retrieval of an appreciation towards communal singing, where choristers seek to find one another’s voice to sing as one.”
Daniel has taught Katie Dobbins 26T the power that vulnerability, perseverance, and collaboration can have on leadership. From Daniel, Jacob Mason 26T says he’s learned that “music that reflects the varied lived experiences of the whole church body enables our worship to speak more fully to God’s people.”
During his years at Candler, Byron Wratee 18T recalls that Daniel invited and empowered students to offer their gifts as sacrifices of praise and as instruments of community building. “Under his direction of the Candler Singers, I learned that rehearsal could be a contemplative practice, an attunement to God’s voice in others,” Wratee says.
Candler is dear to Daniel, especially the sacred space of Cannon Chapel, which is why leaving is hard.
“I think back to all the worship services I have helped plan, prepared for, prepared others for, participated in and led,” he says. “So many different people—it’s Candler’s job, after all, to welcome them in, train them, and send them out to serve—so many different styles of worship, songs sung, languages spoken. There’s no other place that I have ever known like it.”
Daniel addresses the crowd at Candler’s 2024 end of year concert.
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Photos: 1, 2, 4 by Cindy Brown 09T; 5 by CeCe Jefferson 20T 27T; others by Candler staff.