Jose Bowen

José Antonio Bowen is Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts and Professor of Music at Southern Methodist University. Bowen began his teaching career at Stanford University in 1982, first as the Director of Jazz Ensembles, and then for the Humanities Special Programs and the Afro-American Studies Program. In 1994, he became the Founding Director of the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (C.H.A.R.M.) at the University of Southampton, England. He returned to America in 1999 as the first holder of the endowed Caestecker Chair of Music in the new Program in the Performing Arts at Georgetown University. In 2004, Miami University named him Dean of Fine Arts and Professor of Music.

He has written over 100 scholarly articles in many journals including the Journal of Musicology, The Journal of Musicological Research, Performance Practice Review, 19th-century Music, Notes, Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the Royal Musical Associations, Studi Musicali, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and in books from Oxford and Princeton university presses. He is also the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and he received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship for work on his book: The Conductor and the Score: A History of the Relationship between Interpreter and Text from Beethoven to Wagner.

Bowen has also been a pioneer in active learning and the use of technology in the classroom, including podcasts and online games. He was nominated by both students and colleagues for teaching awards at Georgetown and in 1990 he received a Stanford Centennial Award for Undergraduate Teaching.

In over 30 years as a jazz performer, he has appeared in Europe, Israel and the United States with Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Brubeck, Liberace, and many others. His compositions, conducting and playing are featured on numerous recordings and his latest CD, Uncrowded Night, features his playing with the José Bowen Quartet. He has written a symphony (which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1985), a film score, and music for Hubert Laws, Jerry Garcia and many others. His Jewish music (published by Transcontinental Music) is also widely performed and includes a Jazz Shabbat Service (which has received over 70 performances around the world). Other awards for his compositions include the Hubbell, Popular and Standard Awards (from ASCAP), the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts, the Bell T. Richie Prize, and the Koret Israel Prize.

He is currently an editor for the 6-CD set, The Smithsonian Anthology of Jazz, for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and is a Founding Board Member of the National Recording Preservation Board for the Library of Congress. In 1996, Bowen was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in England.

Bowen holds four degrees from Stanford University: a Bachelor of Science in chemistry, a Master of Arts in music composition, a Master of Arts in humanities and a joint Ph.D. in musicology and humanities. Show less