Conductor and violinist Daniel Dodds has gained wide recognition as artistic director of the Festival Strings Lucerne in Switzerland. As a soloist, he has also appeared with a variety of major orchestras.

Dodds was born in 1971 in Adelaide, Australia. His parents were Australian Chinese. Dodds took up the violin at age five, studying with Alita Larsens. When he was 14, he spent a year with his family in Linz, Austria; he took classes at the city's music Gymnasium (high school), and that confirmed his choice of music as a career. At 17, having won scholarships that made it possible for him to study music in Switzerland, he departed Australia for that country. Dodds studied at the Hochschule Luzern with Gunars Larsens and at the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands with Keiko Wataya. After earning honors upon graduating from these programs, he went on for master classes with Nathan Milstein (who exclaimed that he could be Paganini's grandson), Franco Gulli, and Rudolf Baumgartner. Baumgartner proved to be an especially strong influence on the young man's career; Dodds has played a Stradivarius violin once owned by Baumgartner, and Baumgartner recommended him for a place in the Lucerne Festival Strings orchestra. In 2006, he made his recording debut with the Phoebus Quintet on an album of chamber music by Ferenc Farkas, and he remains an enthusiastic chamber music player.

Dodds rose to become the artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Strings, often performing with the group and molding its sound in the Viennese tradition of Baumgartner and other musicians associated with the group. Under his leadership, the Lucerne Festival Strings became the first Swiss orchestra invited to perform at the Elbphilharmonie hall in Hamburg, Germany, and the group has appeared at major festivals, including the Schleswig Holstein Festival, Rheingau Music Festival, and Hong Kong Music Festival. Dodds has enriched the orchestra's repertory with new works by such composers as Peteris Vasks and Sofia Gubaidulina, as well as with newly commissioned pieces by composers Luigi Laveglia and Stephan Hodel. Retaining ties with his homeland, he has appeared with the Australian World Orchestra, and he has served as guest concertmaster with the Camerata Salzburg and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. As a soloist, he has appeared with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, among other groups. Dodds conducted the Lucerne Festival Strings on a 2014 recording with violinist Arabella Steinbacher and on a 2020 album by violinist Midori, featuring Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. In 2022, he led the group in a recording of Mozart's Haffner Serenade, K. 250; that album appeared on the Sony Classical label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi