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 | | |  | | John Downey |
| | | A native of Chicago, John Downey has spent the last thirty years in Milwaukee, as Chairman of the Composition and Theory department at the University of Wisconsin, where he holds the title of Distinguished Professor of Music. He is an alumnus of De Paul University in Chicago (B.M.), the Chicago Musical College (M.M.), the Paris Conservatoire National de Musique (Prix de Composition), and the University of Paris–Sorbonne (Docteur čs Lettres). Among the composers with whom he has had the opportunity to work are Rieti, Honegger, Boulanger, Milhaud, and Messiaen. He is Director of Theory for the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra. He is also founder and director of the Wisconsin Contemporary Music Forum.
John Downey has been the recipient of a number of important awards, commissions, and honors from institutions and individuals such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Ford Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Copley Foundation, Moebius Foundation, ASCAP, Wisconsin Arts Board, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, Milwaukee Symphony, Milwaukee Youth Symphony, University of Wisconsin, Bennington College, Lawrence University, MacDowell Club of Milwaukee, Hartt School of Music, Rutgers University, Butler University, Fine Arts Quartet, Woodwind Arts Quintet, Wisconsin String Academy, to name a few. Many individual virtuosi performers have commissioned works from John Downey, including George Sopkin, Yolanda Marculescu, Erie Mills, Jeffrey Peterson, Daniel Neesley, Harvey Phillips, Stanley DeRusha, Stephen Basson, Robert Thompson, Gary Karr, Geoffrey Simon, and Tom Stacey.
In 1980, John Downey was knighted by the French government and named “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.” He is listed in Who’s Who in America, the International Who’s Who in Music, Dictionary of International Biography, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. He is the author of La Musique populaire dans l’Oeuvre de Bela Bartok, and has contributed articles to many professional publications.
In the words of Fanfare reviewer, Kyle Gann, “Downey is a musician for whom the ‘isms’ seem not to exist. His music is both tonal and dissonant, lyrical and yet too thorny to fall into categories of either conservatism, new romanticism, or postminimalism. There are no gimmicks here, no systems, and little to indicate whether the pieces were written in 1930, 1980, or yesterday...his music is filled with solid musicianship....” His output encompasses music for a variety of media, from chamber, symphonic, and choral compositions, to electronic tape with light sculpturing and partially controlled improvisation, to computer? generated sounds. His publishers are Theodore Presser and C.F. Peters in the U.S., and Billaudot in Paris, France. His compositions can be heard on the Orion, CRI, Gasparo, Cala, Musical Heritage and Chandos record labels.
John Downey enjoys an international reputation and his works have been performed extensively in Canada, Mexico, South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Israel, Australia, and Asia, as well as throughout the United States. |
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