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Arjan Singh Dogra is one of eight Resident Composers selected to participate in the 2026 Mizzou International Composers Festival. MICF Resident Ensemble Alarm Will Sound will perform his composition Medals of Impotent Bravery at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, at Columbia’s Missouri Theatre. The concert is free and open to the public.
Dogra is a composer and performer based in New York City who creates art to understand and contextualize his relationship with time, nature, and his culture. He invites audiences experiencing his art to challenge their own perception of time and reflect on their connection to the natural and unnatural environments that surround them. Dogra is particularly interested in exploring perplexing elements of lived experience, such as space, perspective, memory, and temporal realms, and seeks meaning in the places where these elements intersect, interplay, and contradict. He graduated from the Berklee College of Music, having studied composition, conducting, and film scoring, and received his Master’s in Composition at the Mannes School of Music where he studied with Christopher Cerrone. He also grew up studying Hindustani classical violin with Dr. Sisirkana Dhar Choudhury, and Hindustani music continues to play a key role in his musical practice. Arjan is currently pursuing a DMA in Composition at Columbia University.
We recently chatted with him via email.
What is your musical background?
I grew up primarily studying Hindustani music on the violin, later picking up trombone as well in elementary school band. Learning Hindustani music meant that I was also improvising and composing from a very young age, and so even though I never really wrote contemporary concert music until undergrad, it felt quite natural to me and I fell in love with it very quickly. In addition to composing, I continue to perform as a conductor and on trombone, bass clarinet, and violin.
How did you hear about MICF?
I have many friends that have participated in MICF in the past who have said wonderful things about their experiences.
Tell us about your piece that will be performed at MICF. What should we listen for?
I wrote my piece in response to the war in West Asia. I feared for my family, watched videos of drones and missiles striking familiar buildings and neighborhoods, and heard stories of missiles flying, exploding, and falling near those I love. Yet the anxiety, anger, and helplessness I felt from afar were only a fraction of what those living at the center of such violence continue to endure, especially in Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon. How can war be treated as a natural condition of human life when nothing shatters our humanity more than the catastrophic devastation caused by the arbitrary ambitions used to justify it?
The title of this piece, Medals of Impotent Bravery, comes from the final line of Amrita Pritam’s poem Tamghe, meaning “medals” in Punjabi. Pritam attacks the language of patriotic heroism and the masculine impulse to turn artificially constructed borders into objects of competition and pride. She calls out the “brave men” on all sides of war who have lost all sense of love, pain, and spirituality, retaining only the knowledge of how to kill. Their fabricated national pride must be defended at the cost of shared humanity. Pritam wrote this poem in the shadow of the partition of the Indian subcontinent, but Tamghe remains relevant as long as the nation is treated as sacred but human lives as expendable.
What does it mean for you to work with an ensemble like Alarm Will Sound?
It is incredibly special. I have been listening to and following their work for so many years and am fascinated by their openness to music of all kinds and their creativity in finding unique ways to evolve the concert-going experience, engaging in many forms of interdisciplinary art while maintaining an incredibly high standard. I am very grateful for the opportunity to work with them!
What do you hope to learn from your MICF experience?
I am most excited to be in great company with the other composer fellows and the guest composers Karola Obermüller and JLin, who all represent such a wide range of musical backgrounds and interests. I can’t wait to learn from and about each and every one of them. I also possess a bit of a nervous-excitement about MICF being just one week long before our world premieres with Alarm Will Sound. I hope I will learn to communicate my ideas with the ensemble as efficiently as possible so that we can make the most of our limited time.
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