Sean Dowgray is a classical percussionists specializing in modern and contemporary
music. Currently a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, Dowgray has worked with every
established music organization in the San Diego area including the San Diego Symphony,
La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, red fish blue fish percussion ensemble, Palimpsest new
music ensemble, RENGA, San Diego New Music, Art of Élan, the La Jolla Music Society.
Furthermore, Dowgray has appeared on multiple occasions with Los Angeles’ preeminent
new music series Monday Evening Concerts, the WasteLAnd New Music Series, the Los
Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight Series, and with the San Francisco Contemporary
Chamber Players. Dowgray has been an active performer throughout the United States,
having performed with members of the International Contemporary Music Ensemble and
having appeared in venues including Carnegie Hall, the DiMenna Center, The Cleveland
Museum of Art, and Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Learning.
As a soloist, Dowgray has focused extensively on works that stretch the technical
and expressive capabilities of both instrument and performer. This includes the work
of Jason Eckardt, Josh Levine, Daniel Tacke, Salvatore Sciarrino, Lewis Nielson, David
Lang, Christopher Adler, Brian Ferneyhough, Luciano Berio, Richard Barrett, and most
recently Ylva Lund Bergner. Dowgray has been featured as a soloist at the Oberlin
Percussion Institute, the Percussive Art Society International Convention (PASIC),
the WasteLAnd New Music Series, Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Learning, the University
of Arizona, the SoundON New Music Festival, and Eureka! Musical Minds of California.
Dowgray is a proponent of creative collaborations which have resulted in recent musical
works by Daniel Tacke (Vorrücken and einsamkeit), Josh Levine (Shrinking world/expanding and Les yeux ouverts) as well as new chamber works by Justin Murphy-Mancini (Sic itur ad astra) and Lydia Winsor Brinadmour (As if, sand). In the recent past, Dowgray has collaborated closely with composers including Jürg
Frey (Garden of Transparency), Christopher Adler (Strata), Ioannis Mitsialis (Machine Mode), Lewis Nielson (Where Ashes Make the Flowers Grow and NOVA), and James Wood (Cloud Polyphonies).
As a creative researcher, Dowgray focuses primarily on explorations of sound that
are heedful of the physical world and pursue aspects of the other in music ⏤ that is, the incorporation of sounds and/or techniques previously excluded from the
musical domain. Furthermore, ancient theories of sonority and their fractured relationships
with contemporary artistic trends as well as the emergence of time and the means by
which bodies move through it⏤both individually and collectively⏤are of particular interest.
Dowgray is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy where he studied with John Alfieri,
the Oberlin Conservatory (B.M.) where studied with Michael Rosen, and the University
of Alaska Fairbanks (M.M.) where he studied with Dr. Morris Palter.