Peabz Pleased
Bower joins Peabody Institute music theory faculty.
Described as "a twenty-first century Berlioz" (cvnc.org), John Bower composes contemporary music for acoustic instruments, electronics, and combinations of the two. With a sensitivity for timbre, resonance, and harmonic inflection, Bower's language speaks with a salient lyricism balanced by visceral, phrenetic polyphony.
John's compositions are widely programmed, having been heard in the United States, Switzerland, and Italy; in such cities as Boston, San Francisco, Buffalo, Memphis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Raleigh/Durham, NC; and in forums that include June in Buffalo, the Imagine Festival, MusicX, soundSCAPE, and the Encounters and Milestones festivals among others. His music is performed by such noted soloists as John McDonald, Jonathan Bagg, Anne Black, Lisa Cella, Matt Albert, and Michael Orland; the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble; Zeitgeist; and by the members of other celebrated ensembles in the U.S. and abroad.
A diverse body of works includes pieces for varied instrumentation, musical facility, and media. Commissioning bodies include the Encounters and Milestones music festivals, the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Duke University, the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, and violist Jonathan Bagg. Bower's digital media composition, ombres d'un reflet, is featured in the third edition of Sound Lab Channel, a curated collection of sonic art and electronic music based in Cologne, Germany.
Born in 1979, John grew up in metropolitan Washington, D.C., New England, and New Jersey where he ameliorated the excessive fusion and prog rock of his teenage years by studying classical guitar with Michael Newman and later accepting a jazz performance scholarship from the Berklee College of Music. Dr. Bower holds composition degrees from the Berklee College of Music (B.M.) and Duke University (Ph.D., and A.M.). His principal teachers have included Scott Lindroth, Stephen Jaffe, Anthony Kelley, Marti Epstein, Randall Woolf, and James Russell Smith.
John is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships for his artistic and academic work, including a 2008 McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship in music composition.
John lives and composes in Baltimore.