Dale Wilson has composed and arranged music for a variety of media, including large and small jazz ensembles, full orchestra, string orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz chorus, Chinese instrumental ensemble, and various pop ensembles. His original compositions have been performed at New York's Merkin Hall, The Blue Note Jazz Club (NY), The Garage (NY), Smalls Jazz Club (NY), International Association of Jazz Educator's (IAJE) annual conference, American Bandmasters Association (ABA) annual conference, International Double Reed Society (IDRS) annual conference, and other venues in the United States and Europe. Ensembles performing his music have included New York BMI Jazz Orchestra, The Nonet (NY), Hamburg Radio Orchestra, The Jazz Ambassadors, Double Reed Choir of Hell’s Kitchen, United States Air Force Heritage of America Band, Mats Holmquist Big Bad Band (Stockholm), The Laurel Quartet, University of North Texas One O'Clock Lab Band, University of Nevada at Las Vegas Wind Orchestra, University of North Florida Jazz Ensemble I, as well as other groups.

Awards for his compositions include winner of the Gil Evans Fellowship Competition, an international jazz composition competition sponsored by the International Association of Jazz Educators, the Herb Albert Jazz Endowment Fund, and Meet the Composer; and a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Composition Fellowship. Recording credits include Mark Records, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, Silver Burdett Ginn, Emperor Entertainment Group (EEG), CBS/Sony (Hong Kong), WEA (Asia), Capital (Hong Kong), and other labels. He was a consultant for the soundtrack recording of Disney’s Mulan Jr., Disney’s theatrical adaptation of the feature film, Mulan.

Wilson has written extensively in the jazz idiom, but he also writes across stylistic boundaries. Arrangements/orchestrations for two major children’s music series (Spotlight on Music, Macmillian/McGraw-Hill; and Making Music, Silver Burdett Ginn) feature music for orchestra and children’s voices in idioms such as jazz, gospel, classical concert music, Asian folk music, and African highlife. His eclecticism is especially evident in two extended works for wind orchestra and jazz ensemble: What Was That Song? (for pianist Stefan Karlson), and Piece for Jazz Clarinet and Wind Orchestra (for clarinetist Ken Peplowski); and The Hills are Singing, an extended piece for oboe, oboe d’amore, English horn, heckelphone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, contrabass, vibraphone, and percussion (for drummer Grisha Alexiev). Among his recent pieces for The Nonet (co-directed by John Eckert, Eliot Zigmund, and Bobby Porcelli) are jazz arrangements of old Chinese songs.