-
Jeffrey Bowen, composition
Jeffrey Bowen is an American composer, guitarist, and educator whose compositions have been performed by Pascal Gallois, Maja Cerar, Beta Collide, the 113 Collective, the Seattle Modern Orchestra, and the Luminosity Orchestra, among other ensembles. In 2013 his orchestral piece Stalasso was chosen by conductor Ludovic Morlot for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra's New Music Works program, and he has recently presented his music at the University of Washington's Harry Partch Festival, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, the International Computer Music Conference, the SEAMUS national conference, and as a resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
In 2019 he received a Jack Straw Artist Support Grant to record his piece for the Harry Partch Instruments, Where All That's Solid Melts Into Air, and his work What Will Sound (was already sound), for violin and live electronics, was released by Parma Records in 2020. Seattle's 4Culture and Artist Trust organizations have supported recent collaborations with the Seattle-Isfahan Project, which commissions Iranian and Seattle-based composers to write new works for chamber ensembles involving the classical guitar. His music has been recognized with a First Prize in the 30th International Composition Competition "Città di Barletta," and with second prizes from the European Composer Competition in 2021 and from the American Prize in 2023.
Born in 1987 in St. Louis, Missouri, Bowen studied classical guitar with William Ash from 1996-2006. After studying composition with Jaroslaw Kapuscinski and Mark Applebaum and classical guitar with Charles Ferguson at Stanford University, he completed a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree in composition at the University of Washington under Joël-François Durand. He is currently based in Seattle, where he has taught composition and music theory as a lecturer at the University of Washington, currently teaches guitar as well as seminars in global music, composition, and music production at Seattle University, and is co-director of the Inverted Space Ensemble, which commissions and programs new works alongside adventurous music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and which has held residencies at Cornish College of the Arts, the University of Washington, and Seattle University.