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 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.