Danlee was born in Tacoma, Washington, to parents who were accomplished musicians. He began musical studies early, excelled in high school, and then spent a brief time at the University of Puget Sound. His life took a wonderfully strange turn when he went to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1956. At this time, Partch came to Illinois for a production of his newest work, The Bewitched, to be premiered in the spring of 1957.
Danlee had chosen UI because — at the time — it was one of the few universities to institute a comprehensive percussion program, begun by Paul Price and Jack McKenzie. While he had not previously known of Partch, Danlee recalled:
"The people there said 'Well, would you like to be in this ensemble that we're going to play his music?' so I said sure, I'll go over there and see his studio where they had his instruments and check it out. And so I did, and I met him and I saw all these instruments and they they looked very interesting to me. I saw that this was going to be a pretty interesting and fulfilling experience, so I latched onto one of the instruments and started learning it, and then rehearsals started for this piece that they were they were going to perform in Illinois in the spring. It was then I realized, artistically and intuitively, that here percussion was an integral part of the musical structure and not just color in the background of a concert band or an orchestra."
The die was cast. When Partch moved to Northwestern University in 1958, Danlee followed him there, helping to arrange an ensemble to record and film U.S. Highball and other works and generally assisting Harry. The following year, Partch and Mitchell returned to the University of Illinois, with Danlee becoming a graduate assistant to both Partch and Jack McKenzie. In the following three years, he assisted Partch in two more premieres and graduated in 1962 with a master's. In 1964, he traveled to Petaluma, CA, to assist Partch again. Along with percussionist Michael Ranta, they recorded all of the duets that formed And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma in an abandoned chick hatchery.
Later that fall, Danlee moved to San Diego, having taken a position as Professor of Music at San Diego State University, and began a new percussion program there. Soon, Partch would relocate to various residences in Los Angeles and San Diego, and Danlee assumed more significant duties as music director and ensemble manager. Under his guidance, the influential Whitney Museum concert transpired in 1968, followed by the iconic Columbia recording The World of Harry Partch. Soon after, he and Partch began rehearsals for Partch's last extensive staged work, Delusion of the Fury, which premiered at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969 and was subsequently recorded by Columbia.
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