Douglas Buchanan

Musicology

Douglas Buchanan (b. 1984, Westfield, NY) is active as a composer, pedagogue, and performer in Baltimore and throughout the country. His compositions have been praised for being “filled with terrific orchestral color and weight, not to mention feeling,” (Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun) and “spectacular…ethereally beautiful” (Baynard Woods, What Weekly). Past commissions include works for the Annapolis Opera, the Peabody Dance Department, the mode iv vocal ensemble, Rhymes with Opera, the Figaro Project, as well as world-renowned poet and Shostakovich collaborator Yevgeny Yevtoshenko. His works have also been read and performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, the Symphony in C, the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, and the Wooster Chorus. In 2009 Buchanan received the Presser Award for the composition and performance of his virtuosic piano cycle Colonnades—praised as “magnificent” (William Averrit, composer) with audiences “awestruck and blown away by the performance, the substance and the scope of the work” (Mark Frazier, organist). He was selected as winner of the 2011-2012 Macht Competition for Best Orchestral Score and as the 2012-2013 winner of the Symphony in C Young Composer’s Competition. He has studied with composers Michael Hersch, Nicholas Maw, Libby Larsen, Chen Yi, and Melissa Hui, and received master class tutelage from Christopher Rouse, Christopher Theofanidis, and Karel Husa.

Buchanan also serves as Organist and Choirmaster at historic Old St. Paul’s Church in downtown Baltimore, where he conducts the St. Paul’s Singers, the St. Paul’s Camerata, and the St. Paul’s Choir of Men and Boys, the second oldest choir of its kind in the nation. An active teacher, Buchanan serves as adjunct Music Theory, Composition, and Conducting faculty at Towson University, and as adjunct Music Theory and Musicology faculty at the Peabody Conservatory. Recent scholarly involvement includes: featured presenter at the 2011 Royal College of Music (London) Composer’s Conference; featured presenter at the Diocese of Maryland’s 2011 “Music and Liturgy as Way of Welcome” Conference; adjudicator for the 2012 Keystone Composition Competition; Master Teacher for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society’s 2012 Young Composer Readings; and co-author of two books published by Continuum Publishing.

Buchanan is a member of the Pi Kappa Lambda Honorary Society, and holds degrees from the College of Wooster (B.Mus., Piano Performance, summa cum laude and departmental honors, 2006), and the Peabody Conservatory (M.Mus., Composition, and M.Mus., Music Theory Pedagogy, 2008), where he is currently completing doctoral work in Composition.