Daniel Ott was born on 6 September 1960 in Grub (Appenzell, Switzerland), and later grew up in the Basle region. In 1980, he gained his piano diploma and went on to teach piano and music in the Basle and Graubünden regions. At the same time, he was also involved in the establishment of various independent theatre groups, including a horse-drawn wagon tour through Switzerland with a street theatre group. Theatre studies took him to Paris and London between 1983 and 1985, and from 1985 to 1990, he studied composition with Nicolaus A. Huber at the Folkwang University, Essen, and with Klaus Huber at the Freiburg University of Music.

Since 1990, Daniel Ott has been working on a freelance basis as composer, pianist and actor, mainly in the field of new music theatre - and has also been involved in interdisciplinary and room/landscape-related works. In 1990, he founded the “Rümlingen New Music Festival”. Between 1995 and 2004 he has been teaching experimental music at the University of Arts in Berlin. In 1999/2000, he wrote the music theatre cycle ojota I-IV. In 2000, he composed klangkörperklang – music for Peter Zuthmor’s Swiss Pavilion (EXPO Hanover 2000).

This works were followed by landscape compositions for the Harbour Sassnitz/Rügen (2002), the Heiligkreuz/Entlebuch (2003) and the river Neisse between Görlitz and Zgorzelec (2005), and the Rheinhafen Basel (2006).

In 2005, he became professor for composition and experimental music at the University of arts, Berlin.