Imagine your leadership team operating with the same clarity, trust, and adaptive responsiveness as a world-class jazz ensemble.
In Playing In Tune, Daniel Glass and his trio place teams inside a real-time collaborative experience that develops essential leadership capabilities — deep listening, psychological safety, shared accountability, and adaptive decision-making — all directly transferable to today’s complex organizational challenges.
Back in 1990, John S. Clarkeson, then president and CEO of the Boston Consulting Group, made a bold prediction: “The winning organizations of the future will look like a collection of jazz ensembles.”
More than three decades later, Clarkeson’s prophetic vision has become a reality. To compete in today’s fast-paced, interconnected world of business, the top-performing organizations have shed outdated business models built around rigid hierarchies, top-down control, and micromanagement.
Instead, they rely on a more nimble approach that mirrors the teamwork found in a jazz group.
In Playing In Tune, acclaimed New York drummer, author, and educator Daniel Glass and his world class trio establish some key connections between jazz and business using a simple but powerful message: Jazz is a conversation, and leadership is too.
In a jazz trio, “active listening” is not an ideal, but a fundamental requirement for success. Every contribution shapes what comes next. Collaboration, trust, autonomy, and shared purpose are skill sets that must be highly developed if the music is to succeed at its primary purpose (namely, moving the hearts of listeners). When the conversation is strong, the delivered outcome is stronger than what any individual could have planned alone.
More than just a lecture or concert, Playing In Tune is an immersive experience that puts you onstage with the band—allowing you to witness firsthand the key principles that make jazz ensembles tick: improvisation, flow state, decentralized innovation, trust, psychological safety, and constructive conflict.
Using live performance, storytelling, and interactive exercises, Glass and his trio offer participants the unique opportunity to experience the jazz mindset firsthand. Working together in real time, leaders and teams learn how to translate their experiences into tangible outcomes, including:
- Stronger alignment around shared purpose, without rigid scripts.
- Higher trust that creates freedom to take risks and adapt in real time.
- Creating more productive conversations, where ideas are developed, not repeated.
- Better use of collective intelligence, creativity, and diverse perspectives.
- Outcomes that emerge from the group, often exceeding initial expectations.
Ultimately, Playing In Tune offers a powerful new lens for understanding leadership and collaboration, using the model of a high-performing jazz trio to spark fresh insight—and new possibilities—for your own team.
For more information, please visit:
 https://PlayingInTune.com/
Bridging Business Leadership and MusicÂ
by Daniel Wachter
President and CEO of the Colorado Symphony
My work at the intersection of music and leadership grew out of lived experience, not theory. During my time on the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, I began to see striking parallels between how orchestras function at their best and the challenges facing modern organizations: alignment without rigidity, trust under pressure, and leadership as a shared responsibility rather than command and control.
After joining the board of the Colorado Symphony, I helped develop and deliver Conducting Business Leadership, an orchestra-inspired leadership workshop series that translates these dynamics into practical insights for business leaders. Launched in 2024 and continued in 2025, the program explores how listening, coordination, and shared purpose drive performance, and will expand further with a chorus-based version in 2026.
My collaboration with Daniel Glass grew naturally from this work. We met in early 2024 at New York's famed Birdland Jazz Club, after one of his regular Monday night performances. Our shared fascination with leadership, jazz music, and human dynamics sparked an ongoing dialogue. Later that year, Daniel encouraged me to immerse myself more deeply in jazz drumming by joining his four-day intensive workshop in Germany. There, I had the opportunity to focus without distraction on my drumming, and I reconnected with the craft on a much deeper personal level. That experience sharpened my understanding of jazz not just as a musical form, but as a powerful, lived model of real-time collaboration.
Together, Daniel and I began developing a jazz-inspired leadership experience that builds on these shared insights. In October 2025, we delivered Playing in Tune for the first time, bringing business leaders into the heart of the jazz conversation, where listening, trust, and thoughtful response transform individual contributions into outcomes no one could have predicted alone.
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Daniel Wachter is a seasoned global executive and transformative business leader with deep expertise in packaging, specialty chemicals, and consumer goods. He has led turnarounds and growth at international firms including Storopack, Bemis, Amcor, and Chromatic Technologies Inc., where he served as CEO until mid-2025.
Daniel has served on the boards of both the Cincinnati and Colorado Symphony orchestras, and was appointed President & CEO of the Colorado Symphony in 2025. He holds an Executive MBA from Steinbeis University in collaboration with institutions in Germany, Switzerland, and the U.S., and has completed executive education at Harvard and Columbia.Â
A dual U.S. and German citizen, Daniel is an active investor, civic leader, and advocate for the arts. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Tina, and maintains a residence in downtown Denver near Boettcher Concert Hall.
About TheÂ
Daniel Glass Trio
Daniel Glass: Drums
Sean Harkness: Guitar
Michael O'Brien: BassÂ
Daniel Glass is an award-winning New York City-based drummer, author, historian, and educator. He has performed and recorded with world-class artists including Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, Brian Setzer, Royal Crown Revue and KISS frontman Gene Simmons. He also leads his own group, the Daniel Glass Trio, which features Sean Harkness on guitar and Michael O'Brien on bass.
Since 2010, Daniel has been the Monday-night house drummer at NYC’s legendary Birdland Jazz Club and has twice been voted one of the world’s top five drummers by Modern Drummer and DRUM magazine readers. Beyond the stage, Daniel has published eight influential books and DVDs on American Popular Music. He also operates a successful online course portal, Drumming In Motion. Daniel also created “From Ragtime to Rock” - a curriculum used in more than 1000 schools in the U.S., Canada and Europe - and has conducted hundreds of clinics, master classes and interactive workshops globally.
In these high-pressure, collaborative musical environments, Daniel began to recognize some striking parallels between a top-tier jazz ensemble and a high-performing business team—both thrive on trust, communication, adaptability, and a shared vision. This insight inspired Playing In Tune, an immersive and interactive seminar that challenges leaders to rethink how improvisation, flow, decentralized innovation and other jazz principles can transform their organizations. www.DanielGlass.com
Sean Harkness (guitar) is in high demand as a performer and composer. He accompanies an astonishing array of world class vocalists, musicians and ensembles. A six-time recipient of MAC (Manhattan Association of Clubs & Cabarets) awards, he recently garnered the Outstanding Instrumentalist Backstage Bistro Award. Deemed a musician's musician by his peers, he is often invited to hold guitar master classes at some of the world's most prominent music schools and universities. According to The New York Times, "Harkness gives full expression to the mood of the moment." www.SeanHarkness.com
Michael O'Brien (bass) is a world renowned bass player. A student of the great Anthony Cox, he has composed or played with Harry Connick, Jr., Ruben Blades, the Jazz Mandolin Project and more. He has taught at the West Bank School of Music, MusicTech and McNalley-Smith College. He is not only an accomplished educator and composer, but his arrangements have been performed all over the world. Recently, his arrangement of "Pine" was performed at the Kennedy Center by the acclaimed string quartet, Ethel.
