Jason Thorpe Buchanan is a tri-continentally active composer, intermedia artist, and technologist. His works explore multiplicity, causality, behavior, and the integration of live performance with technology. In 2025, he was appointed Professor für Komposition mit digitalen Medien at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, Germany, and leads the graduate program in Komposition mit neuen Medien as director of the Studio für experimentelle elektronische Musik. He has been recognized internationally through fellowships and commissions from the Fulbright Foundation (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, 2010-11) as a visiting scholar, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, EMPAC, Royaumont (France, 2016 & 2017), TIME SPANS (NYC), the Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF, 2013), the International Horn Society, Eklekto Percussion (Switzerland), Tetractys New Music (Austin), Tzlil Meudcan, the Earle Brown Music Foundation, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards (2014 & 2015), Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, as winner of Iron Composer (2014), the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize (2014) and more, including selection as Artist-in-Residence at USF Verftet (Norway), the Embassy of Foreign Artists (Geneva), the Brush Creek Foundation (Wyoming), nomination for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, as a 2024 Aaron Copland Bogliasco Fellow (Italy), and as an SWR Experimentalstudio Fellow (Germany, 2026). His works have been described as “an unearthly collage of sounds”, “sharply-edged”, and “free jazz gone wrong—in a good way.”
     Commissions and performances have included collaborations with Alarm Will Sound, the Talea Ensemble, Ensemble Interface (DE), Ensemble Nikel (Israel), Linea (FR), Insomnio (NL), EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble (UK), Slagwerk Den Haag (NL), Eklekto Percussion (CH), the Mivos Quartet (USA), Iktus Percussion, wild Up, the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, TACETi (Thailand), the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and Line Upon Line. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger have received performances at the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, The Industry’s FIRST TAKE in L.A., and MATA (NYC) with the [Switch~ Ensemble]. “Hunger is a kind of training session in mental disintegration… An ungodly opera needs ugly music, singers who produce primal sounds, an electric guitar that sounds scraped raw, a wailing orchestra effects, cuts the ear like a knife. Buchanan delivers.” – L.A. Times
     He serves as Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble] since 2012, Artistic Associate and Lecturer in New Media and Digital Technologies for Music at the Hochschule für Musik ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ Dresden, Germany within the Hybrid Music Lab (DE) since 2022, and Faculty Artist of the IntAct Festival’s International Composition Institute of Thailand since 2019. Prof. Thorpe Buchanan has formerly served as 2022 Managing Director of the New Music Initiative at the University of Missouri (USA), 2020 Visiting Lecturer in Composition and Interim Director of the UT Austin Electronic Music Studios at the Butler School of Music, University of Texas at Austin, 2018-2022 Department Chair/Lecturer in Composition, Theory, and Electroacoustic Music at Mahidol University (Thailand), 2015-17 Executive Director of the VIPA Festival (Valencia, Spain), and Curator for the San Francisco Center for New Music. His mentors have included Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Steven Takasugi, Pierluigi Billone, Chaya Czernowin, and Georges Aperghis.
     He holds a Ph.D. in Composition from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, and is widely sought as a collaborator and guest composer by institutions such as the University of Chicago, Stanford University, TRANSIT Festival (Belgium), TIME SPANS Festival (NYC), the MATA Festival (NYC), the Grieg Academy at the University of Bergen (Norway), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the SinusTon Festival (Germany), the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst, UC Santa Barbara, and dozens of Universities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Current projects include a cello concerto for the TACETi Ensemble and Mariel Roberts, and the development of new technologies for an upcoming collaboration with Nadar Ensemble using generative audiovisual processing systems, wearable technology, and machine learning/listening for real-time analysis and reactivity.

The talk-show about People who are changing the world by being themselves recorded in partnership with the broadcast service of UNLV & 91.5 the Source. Hosted By: Robert Gray 

The privilege of a lifetime is to use who we are to elevate the higher good of everyone else; however we decide to do this professionally should be our greatest joy. Makers and Finders is a movement committed to deepening the human experience, inspiring its listeners to be more in tune with who they are. 

Composer, piano and music theory teacher, I just graduated from UNLV, May 2014 with a bachelors in music composition. Now onto the real world...  

Melos Music is a collective of composers who collaborate to create, publish, concertize, and advance new music to a global community. Melos composers are attracting significant attention in the U.S. and abroad with over one hundred annual concert performances worldwide.  Melos Music’s ongoing projects involve substantial collaborations with other ensembles and organizations which seek to cultivate new audiences and generate enthusiasm for contemporary music.  

Creative projects by Melos and its composers have been supported by ASCAP, New Music USA, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, the Theodore Presser Foundation, CBDNA, MTNA, the Mid-American Center for Contemporary Music, and others.  In addition, works written specifically for Melos projects have received awards from BMI, The American Prize, the newEar Competition, and the International Women in Music Conference. Melos composers have also received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Fontainebleau Academy, and the Paul Sacher Stiftung Foundation, and they have received fellowships or commissions from leading music festivals including the Tanglewood Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Composer’s Conference at Wellesley College, June in Buffalo, the Brevard Music Center, soundSCAPE Festival in Italy, EAMA, the FuBis Academy in Berlin, La Pietra Forum in Italy, and others.

Orchestral works by Melos composers have been performed by the Nashville Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Eastman Philharmonia, the Loyola Symphony Orchestra, the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Sound ExChange Orchestra, and the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra.  Wind Ensemble works have been performed by dozens of professional and collegiate ensembles in the United States, Canada, Japan, and elsewhere, while Choral, Operatic, and Art Song compositions receive dozens of annual performances around the world. Additionally, many leading new music ensembles have performed works by Melos composers including the Argento Ensemble, the Cygnus Ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players, Ensemble Dal Niente, the Fifth House Ensemble, the PRISM Quartet, the Jack Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, and the Momenta Quartet. Melos composers have also been featured at major electro-acoustic festivals including the International Computer Music Conference (England), the NYC Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, the Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (Taiwan), and the SEAMUS National Conference (Miami, FL).  

Melos composers are frequently featured on radio broadcasts, webcasts, and lectures throughout the U.S., and the group released its first commercial recording in 2012.  With all this and more, the group is quickly establishing itself as an important arts organization featuring many important emerging American composers.


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