William Dougherty

William Dougherty is an American composer and recipient of the 2021 Luciano Berio Rome Prize in Music Composition from the American Academy in Rome. Dougherty's works have been performed internationally by ensembles including Distractfold Ensemble (Manchester), The Sun Ra Arkestra (Philadelphia), Yarn/Wire (New York), Ensemble Phoenix (Basel), TILT Brass (New York), Ensemble for New Music Tallinn (Estonia), JACK Quartet (New York), and Talea Ensemble (New York). His music has been featured in festivals such as IRCAM's ManiFeste (2019), musikprotokoll (2018), Donaueschingen Musiktage (2017), New Music Miami (2017), Tectonics Festival New York (2015), the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2015), the 47th Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (2014), the New York Philharmonic Biennale (2014), and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Dougherty has received recognitions and awards from Gaudeamus Muziekweek, the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM/ISCM), the Aaron Copland House, SEAMUS/ASCAP, BMI, PARMA Recordings, the PRS for Music Society, the American Composers Forum, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, the Institute for European Studies, and the UK Foreign Aid and Commonwealth Office. William has been invited to attend composition courses at Acanthes, Fontainebleau, Royaumont, and IMPULS. He earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) degree at Columbia University in New York City where his dissertation explores the collaborative creative process behind Éliane Radigue's instrumental music.

William has contributed regular feature music programs to WKCR-FM New York and has published articles, reviews, and interviews in Tempo (Cambridge University Press), Music & Literature, and VAN Magazine. He is currently guest co-editing a forthcoming special issue of Contemporary Music Review on the music of Éliane Radigue—the first major English-language journal to focus exclusively on her work. He is also the Editor-in-chief of openwork, a new peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal that publishes research into experimental music, art, and scholarship.

As an educator, William has taught and assisted undergraduate courses at Columbia University including Introduction to Composition, Programming and Electronics, Introduction to Digital Music, and Masterpieces of Western Music. In the spring of 2020, William designed a course, Reimagining Resistance: Sound as Subversion in 20th and 21st Century American Experimentalism as a Teaching Scholar of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Outside of the university, William gives private lessons and volunteers as a music instructor and mentor for high school and elementary school students from underserved communities in New York.

William graduated with a Bachelor’s in Music Composition from Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance in Philadelphia where he studied with Maurice Wright, Richard Brodhead, and Jan Krzywicki. As a Marshall Scholar, William earned his Master’s from the Royal College of Music in London studying with Kenneth Hesketh and Mark-Anthony Turnage after which he completed supplementary studies (Ergänzungsstudium) under the guidance of Georg Friedrich Haas at the Hochschule für Musik Basel in Switzerland. In 2018-19, William completed the Cursus Programme in composition and computer music at IRCAM in Paris while in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts.

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Ordered by year. Most recent works appears first

The dreams of imagined homelands (2023)

for symphony Orchestra

William Dougherty

William Dougherty

Symphony Orchestra

Chamber Ensemble (5 - 9 instruments)

Ensemble (Instruments or Voices) and Fixed Electronic Media

String Quartet

Ensemble (10 - 19 instruments)

Chamber Group ( 2 - 4 instruments )

Soloist (Instrument or Voice) and Fixed Electronic Media

Orchestral Music