Resident composer Thomas Dougherty comes to the 2015 Mizzou International Composers Festival from Houston, TX, where he earned his master of music degree in composition from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and has served as composer and violinist for the Da Camera of Houston Young Artists Program.

Very soon, though, he’ll move to Los Angeles to begin work this fall on a DMA in composition at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where the faculty includes 2015 MICF distinguished guest composer Andrew Norman.

A native of Pittsburgh, Dougherty attended Carnegie Mellon University during his senior year of high school, and went on to receive bachelor’s degrees in both composition and violin performance from the Eastman School of Music.

While a student at Eastman, Dougherty was awarded the Anthony and Carolyn Donato Prize and the Louis Lane Prize for Composition, and also was the winner of the Eastman Orchestral Composition Competition, which resulted in a performance of his “Three Pieces for Orchestra” by the Eastman Philharmonia.

As a violinist, Dougherty has performed many of his own solo and chamber works, has served as concertmaster for the Eastman Philharmonia, and was awarded first prize at the 2014 Music For Mt. Lebanon Keynotes Scholarship competition.

His residencies have included time as a Chamber Music Institute Fellow at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he wrote a piece for the Meadowlark Trio, and at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau in France, studying harmony and composition. Dougherty has also attended festivals such as the FUBiS Music Composition Course at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Composition Course at Montserrat in Valencia, Spain, and has presented his works in masterclasses to composers Steven Stucky and David Lang.

You can hear samples of Thomas Dougherty’s music in the embedded SoundCloud players below.