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Contact Information

buchanad@dickinson.edu

Weiss Center for the Arts
717-245-1568

Bio

Recognized for his “sense of creative imperative” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and for music “filled with terrific orchestral color and weight, not to mention feeling” (The Baltimore Sun), Douglas Buchanan (b. 1984, Westfield, NY) is an active composer, conductor, performer, and educator in the greater Baltimore/D.C. area. He currently serves as Composition Faculty at °µÍø½ûÇø, Music Theory and Musicology Faculty at the Peabody Conservatory, Artistic Director of the Maryland Choral Society, Co-Founder and Director of Voices Rise: A Baltimore Choir of Hope, and Organist and Choirmaster of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Baltimore. He completed his DMA in Composition under the tutelage of Michael Hersch at the Peabody Conservatory, receiving the Philip D. Glass Prize in Composition and the Edward T. Cone Memorial Award in Music Theory. Previous degrees include Composition (M.Mus., the Peabody Conservatory), Music Theory Pedagogy (M.Mus., the Peabody Conservatory), and Piano Performance (B.Mus., the College of Wooster), where he trained as an organist with John Russell, and as a conductor with Jeffrey Lindberg and Nancy Ditmer. Buchanan’s compositions have been praised for their “ability to get under the skin of [the music’s] core material,” (The Scotsman) wherein his cross-disciplinary musicianship is evident. His works are frequently linked with poetic texts and visual art, creating a network of images, words, and music akin to the mythic experience of ritual. In August 2017 he was the recipient of the Sackler Prize in Music Composition, a substantial national award commissioning a new opera to be premiered in 2019. From 2016-2018 he will serve as Composer-in-Residence for the Dallas Chamber Symphony, funded by a grant from the TACA Foundation and culminating in the performance of Crossroads, a chamber symphony featuring the Dallas Street Choir with poetry written by the Street Choir’s members. His piano cycle Colonnades, which included text and photography by the composer, received both a Presser Award from the Peabody Institute and an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award; its sequel, Welkinharmonie, for solo organ, was supported by a residency at the Shin Pond Artist’s Retreat, and culminated in a performance in October 2015 at the National Cathedral. Other notable collaborations include: commissions from the Peabody and Annapolis Operas, the Montreat Music conference, Rhymes with Opera, and Shostakovich collaborator Yevgeny Yevtoshenko; residencies with the LUNAR ensemble, the Broken Consort, and the Canticle Singers of Baltimore; and performances and readings by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, the Peabody Children’s Chorus, the Peabody Symphony Orchestra (which awarded Buchanan the Macht Award for Outstanding Orchestral Composition), the Hebrides Ensemble, and the Symphony in C (which granted Buchanan their Young Composers Award for his work Malleus). Previous composition study includes lessons with Libby Larsen, Nicholas Maw, Chen Yi, Sally Beamish, Alasdair Nicolson, Jack Gallagher, and Melissa Hui, and masterclasses with Christopher Rouse, Christopher Theofanidis, and Karel Husa. An advocate for young composers, he teaches privately in Baltimore and has served as coordinator and composition mentor for the Baltimore Choral Arts Young Composers Readings.

Education

• B.Mus., The College of Wooster, 2006
• M.Mus., The Peabody Conservatory, 2008
• D.M.A., 2013