Dan Magay is steeped in jazz, classical, Indian ragas, Brazilian bossa and choro, funk, and free improvisation — a voice finding fresh things to say on the horn since 2005.

Born in Los Altos, California, he took up the clarinet at nine and the saxophone at ten. He studied with Mary Fettig, Mel Martin, and Rory Snyder; at USC with Yehuda Gilad of the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and at the Berklee College of Music with George Garzone, Bill Pierce, Joe Viola, Jerry Bergonzi, and Hal Crook, graduating magna cum laude in 1994.

In New York he co-founded The Hub with Tim Dahl and Sean Noonan — a punk-jazz trio that recorded for Innova Recordings, toured Europe, Japan, and the United States, and drew praise from The Guardian and Jazzwise.

Back home in the Bay Area, he has played with the Fil Lorenz and Marcus Shelby orchestras, Funky Buela, and the Avatar Ensemble, and leads his own Wind Up Trio, Dan Magay Trio, and Heve Heve Bebe. He teaches all the woodwinds — every age, level, and style — and each morning records DM in the AM, a short meditation on the horn.

Most mornings, before the day gets loud, Dan records a short meditation on the horn — a few unhurried minutes of saxophone, flute, or clarinet, each given a tone: stillness, sadness, joy, courage, devotion. An archive of these mornings lives on the site, filterable by what you need that day.

The mornings are a collaboration, not a broadcast. Subscribers choose their cadence — when it comes, a few mornings a week, or every morning — and can answer back: record their own layer over the day's track, send a reflection, or simply keep the pieces that stay with them.

Alongside the music is The Hang — a colour-field mural of photographs Dan shoots himself: tide pools at Ocean Beach, sunsets, the view from the bandstand. Visitors drag the prints, add their own, and leave the wall a little different than they found it. New photos and films land there first, then flow on to Instagram and Facebook.

Dan is steeped in jazz, classical, Indian ragas, Brazilian bossa and choro, and free improvisation; the mornings are where those streams run quietest. Partnerships with meditation spaces, wellness programs, galleries, and morning gatherings are warmly welcome.

Morning residencies · guided listening sessions · meditation & movement accompaniment · commissioned tones for your community.

“Dan has opened me up to creativity and flexibility I hadn’t been able to explore before.” — Francis W · listener & student

By night Dan leads and lends his horns to bands across the Bay — his own Windup and Magay trios, hot-club gypsy jazz, klezmer, funk and Motown horn sections, and seats in the Fil Lorenz and Marcus Shelby orchestras. Twenty-five years of rooms: from Northsix in Williamsburg with Marc Ribot to European and Japan tours, the Monterey Jazz Festival Big Band, and the Burning Man Jazz Café.

His downtown-New York trio The Hub recorded three albums, including Trucker for Innova Recordings — cut live-to-tape in Brooklyn and still burning. The critics: “curling his sinewy lines that refuse to be intimidated” (The Guardian); “a conversational approach to the alto very akin to that of Eric Dolphy” (Jazzwise).

He plays concert halls, festivals, wine bars, museums and galleries, weddings and house shows — and builds the band to the room, from a single clarinet at candle-light to a full horn-driven dance floor. Every date is confirmed personally; new nights land first on Facebook and in the evening letter.

Tell us the date, the room, and the feeling you want left in it.