Dan Slider, a talented musician, grew up on the south side of Chicago, where his father, a music teacher, directed bands from junior high to high school levels. As a high school student, Dan played trumpet with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and performed locally with his own band. After graduating, he embarked on a journey as a professional musician, performing on the road with several bands before heading to Boston to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music. At Berklee, Dan studied trumpet and big band arranging, and played jazz trumpet in the renowned Phil Wilson Dues Band.
Following his time in Boston, Dan relocated to the west coast, where he collaborated with his close friend and fellow musician, Dann Glenn, on a jazz-fusion album titled "A Whispered Warning." The album received significant airplay on jazz radio and was repeatedly licensed to television shows, including the 1984 Winter Olympics.
In the mid-1980s, Dan began to study film scoring and orchestration privately with renowned composer and orchestrator, Dr. Albert Harris, in Van Nuys, California. Dr. Harris was a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and arranger who had formed Music Service Inc. with Nelson Riddle and was known for his music direction for Barbara Streisand on the "Barbara and Other Instruments" television special. Dan studied with Dr. Harris for two years, concurrently studying with Don Ray at UCLA and arranging with Billy Byers, a renowned arranger who had worked with Frank Sinatra.
After completing his studies, Dan started as a music supervisor at The Studio Music Dept., where he oversaw the scoring of several movie-of-the-week and feature films. He worked on "Fatal Vision" for NBC Productions and began scoring source music for various projects, including "Unnatural Causes" starring John Ritter. Dan also scored the TV series "Fast Copy" for NBC and wrote the theme song for the syndicated version of "Your Show of Shows." He went on to score the theme song for the "Crystal Light National Aerobic Championships," which is still used today for many international events. Throughout his career, Dan has scored over 1000 hours of prime-time network television programming.
