Alumnus Douglas Knehans named Dean of the College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati
Anthony J. Perzigian, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Cincinnati, announced in March the appointment of Dr. Douglas Knehans ('93 MMA, '96 DMA) as dean and professor of music for the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM).
A skilled academic administrator and award-winning composer, Douglas Knehans has 27 years of experience in academia, with over 17 years in a leadership or administrative position. From 2000-2008, Knehans served as director and professor of music for the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Tasmania, one of Australia's most progressive music training institutes. Prior to that, from 1993 to 1999, he served as associate professor of music, head of the department of music composition, theory, and electronic music, and director of the SCREAM (Southern Center for Research into ElectroAcoustic Music) Studio at the University of Alabama School of Music.
As a composer, Knehans has been the recipient of numerous commissions, awards and fellowships in Australia and the US, including awards from the Victorian Council for the Arts, Australian Bicentennial Authority, Australia Council Performing Arts Board, the MacDowell Colony, and the Leighton Artist Colony. Additionally, he has been invited to lecture at Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of the National University of Singapore, Krakow Academy of Music (Krakow, Poland), Australian National University, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, among others.
Knehans' works have been broadcast on Australian National Radio and TV, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, and his music has been commissioned and performed by some of Australia's leading ensembles and soloists, including the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, ELISION Ensemble, Australian Boys Choir, Adelaide Percussions, Timothy Kain, Ariel New Music, and Opera Australia. Select compositions include: seraphic ride, premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2002 by soloists from the National Symphony Orchestra; in questi giorni for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, performed at the 2005 Incontri di Musica Sacra Contemporanea (Italy); and rive, most recently performed at the New Music-New Faces Festival (Krakow, Poland, 2006). In 2007, he was guest composer at the Premieres of the Season Festival in Kiev, Ukraine, where his orchestra work ripple was given its world premiere by the Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra and broadcast over Ukrainian national radio.
Born in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri, Douglas Knehans received his initial music education at the Canberra School of Music in Australia's national capital. He received a Master of Arts in composition from Queens College, CUNY, where he studied with composer Thea Musgrave, and his Master of Musical Arts and Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition from Yale University, where he studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Lukas Foss and Jonathan Berger.
