Douglas Geers: School of Music: University of Minnesota

Douglas Geers

Assistant Professor: Composition

126 Ferguson Hall
612/624-4303
E-mail: geers001@umn.edu

Douglas Geers is a composer who works extensively with technology in composition, performance, and multimedia collaborations. Reviewers have described his music as "...glitchy...keening...scrabbling...contemplative" (Steve Smith, New York Times), "...Powerful..." (Neue Zuericher Zietung), "fascinating...virtuosic...beautifully eerie" (Jim Lowe, Montpelier Times-Argus) and have praised its "shimmering electronic textures" (Kyle Gann, Village Voice.) Geers has composed in a wide range of musical styles, including classical concert music, pop songs, television and film scores, and electroacoustic music.

Geers' music has been performed worldwide, in concerts in North and South America, England, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, China, and Australia, as well as TV, radio, and the Internet. These include numerous performances at the annual International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) from 1995 to 2007, The ISCM World Music Days (International Society for Contemporary Music), SEAMUS (the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States), the Bourges Synthése festival of electronic music, the University of Paris, Humbolt Universität Berlin, the American Festival of Microtonal Music, The Seoul International Computer Music Festival (Korea), the Sonic Circuits festival, the Swiss National Television Network (SF 1), and others.

Geers has won many grants and awards, including a 2007 McKnight Composer Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, a Composers Commissioning Project prize from the American Composers Forum, a Dynamic Duos commission from Composers Collaborative, Inc., the 2000 Roth-Thomson award for "Impressive project for musical composition," and others from sources including the Experimental studio der Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung des Südwestrundfunks e.v. (Germany), the Zürich Hochschule für Musik und Theater (Switzerland), Meet the Composer, ASCAP, NYSCA, the Ditson Fund, Columbia University, the University of Minnesota, and the Mellon Foundation. His works have been recorded on the Innova, Capstone, EMcoll, and SEAMUS labels.

In October 2006, Geers' violin concerto Laugh Perfumes was premiered by the RTV Orchestra of Slovenia (Evan Christ, conductor; Maja Cerar, violin) on the final concert of the 2006 Festival Unicum in Ljubljana, Slovenia. This performance was broadcast live on Slovene national radio and was shown twice on Slovene National Television. Another notable performance was the 2002 production of his 70-minute multimedia theater work, Gilgamesh, in a series of performances at the Theater an der Sihl in Zürich, Switzerland.

Geers’ current projects include Calling, an opera scheduled for fall 2008 premiere and run at La Mama in New York City (concept and libretto by Wickham Boyle) and Inanna, a multimedia theater work being created in collaboration with director Mirjam Neidhart, slated for a 2009 premiere in Switzerland.

Douglas Geers was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio (USA). He studied via scholarships at Xavier University (B.A. in English and Music), the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (Master of Music), and Columbia University (D.M.A., 2002). As a Presidential fellow at Columbia, Geers studied music composition, theory, and computer music with Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail, Brad Garton, and Jonathan Kramer.

Douglas Geers joined the University of Minnesota School of Music faculty as Assistant Professor of Music in the fall of 2002. In addition to his composition, teaching, and research, Geers is also Director of the studios for Sound, Technology, and Research at the University of Minnesota (STRUM); he is the founder and director of the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts, held each February at the University of Minnesota Arts Quarter, Minneapolis; he is a co-founder and co-Director of the Electric Music Collective, an internationally-based group of electroacoustic composer-performers; and he is a member of the electroacoustic performance group Sønreel. Visit Doug's personal website for more information.