Owen Underhill (born January 26, 1954) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

flutist The flute is a family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with Reed (instrument), reeds, a fl ...

and conductor based in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

. He is currently a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of music at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

. He has been an active contributor to the new music scene on the West Coast, as a flutist, as co-music director of Western Front New Music (1982-3), as the artistic director (1987–2000) of the Vancouver New Music Society,Chuck Davis.
The greater Vancouver book: an urban encyclopaedia
'. Linkman Press; 1 January 1997. . p. 687. and as a conductor in Magnetic Band and the Turning Point Ensemble, for which he is also currently the Artistic Co-Director.

Early life and education

Underhill studied composition at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...

with

Rudolf Komorous Rudolf Komorous (born 8 December 1931, Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech-born Canadian composer. His works include ''Twenty-Three Poems about Horses'' (1978), based on the poetry of Li Ho Li He ( – ) was a Chinese poet of the mid-Tang dyn ...

. He completed his master's at

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's ...

under Bülent Arel. He studied analysis at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 1978, and computer sound synthesis at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1979.

Career

Underhill was a visiting composer 1976-7 at

Wilfrid Laurier University Wilfrid Laurier University (commonly referred to as WLU or simply Laurier) is a public university in Ontario, Canada, with campuses in Waterloo, Brantford and Milton. The newer Brantford and Milton campuses are not considered satellite campuses ...

in Waterloo where he taught from 1977–81, creating a composition program and founding an electronic music studio. Since 1981, he has taught at

Burnaby Burnaby is a city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. Located in the centre of the Burrard Peninsula, it neighbours the City of Vancouver to the west, the District of North Vancouver across the confluence of the Burrard I ...

. In 1994 Underhill won first prize in the Winnipeg Symphony's Canadian Composer Competition. In 2000 he released an album of his own compositions, ''Celestial Machine''. In 2012 Underhill's compositions were featured in the album ''Still Image – Music by Owen Underhill'', performed by the Quatuor Bozzini ensemble along with François Houle and Jeremy Berkman . The Turning Point Ensemble, with Underhill as conductor, released the album ''Curio Box'' in 2018.

Selected works

* ''The Celestial Machine'' (1988) * ''Lines of Memory'' (1993) * ''Hinge'' (1996) * ''Cantilena'' (2002) "Intriguing Promise from Bassoons"
''Boston Musical Intelligenc'', November 2, 2014. by Brian Schuth * ''The Star Catalogues'' (1994) * ''Orpheus'' (2002) * ''World of Light'' (2007)

References

External links

OwenUnderhill.caCanadian Music Centre, accessed 31st July 2018
{{DEFAULTSORT:Underhill, Owen 1954 births 21st-century classical composers 20th-century classical composers Canadian classical composers Male conductors (music) Living people Academic staff of Simon Fraser University Canadian classical flautists Musicians from Vancouver University of Victoria alumni Stony Brook University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Academic staff of Wilfrid Laurier University Canadian male classical composers 20th-century Canadian composers 20th-century Canadian conductors (music) 21st-century Canadian conductors (music) 20th-century Canadian male musicians 21st-century Canadian male musicians 20th-century flautists 21st-century flautists