Tectonics 2023 Artist Profile
William Dougherty
William Dougherty is an American composer and current Fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris. Dougherty's works have been performed internationally by ensembles including The Sun Ra Arkestra (Philadelphia), Talea Ensemble (New York), Distractfold Ensemble (Manchester), and the Schallfeld Ensemble (Graz). His music has been featured in festivals such as IRCAM's ManiFeste (2019), musikprotokoll (2018), Donaueschingen Musiktage (2017), and broadcast on 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 3. Dougherty was the recipient of the 2021 Luciano Berio Rome Prize in Music Composition from the American Academy in Rome. He has received additional recognitions, awards, and fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, the Copland House, and the American Composers Forum.
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Nostalgia can be a poetic creation, an individual mechanism of survival, a countercultural practice, a poison, and a cure. It is up to us to take responsibility of our nostalgia and not let others “prefabricate” it for us. The prepackaged “usable past” may be of no use to us if we want to cocreate our future. Perhaps dreams of imagined homelands cannot and should not come to life.
—Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia”, Atlas of Transformation
Inspired by Svetlana Boym’s writings on nostalgia, my new work for the 麻豆官网首页入口 Scottish Symphony Orchestra explores dreams of imagined homelands through a damaged 1907 wax cylinder recording of Home, Sweet Home—a popular tune in the United States throughout the American Civil War and after.
