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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 Zentrum für Intermediale Komposition (formerly Studio für experimentelle elektronische Musik).
He has been recognized internationally through fellowships and commissions from the Fulbright Foundation (to HfMT Hamburg, 2010-11), the American-Scandinavian Foundation, EMPAC (2025), 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 (Switzerland), the Brush Creek Foundation (Wyoming), nomination for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, as a 2024 Aaron Copland Bogliasco Fellow (Italy), and as a 2026 SWR EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO Fellow (Germany).
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, the Blue Water Chamber Orchestra, Académie Voix Nouvelles Ensemble (FR), New European Ensemble, wild Up, the NY Virtuoso Singers, the Eastman Musica Nova Ensemble, TACETi (Thailand), the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Line Upon Line, and more. Scenes from his multimedia opera Hunger have received performances at Darmstadt, The Industry’s FIRST TAKE in L.A., and MATA (NYC) with the [Switch~ Ensemble].
Jason serves as Artistic Director of the [Switch~ Ensemble], 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 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, 2020 Visiting Lecturer in Composition and Interim Director of the 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 the College of Music, Mahidol University (Thailand), 2015-2017 Executive Director of the VIPA Festival (Spain), founding director of the TICF International Academy for Young Composers, 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. from the Eastman School of Music 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), MATA, the Grieg Academy at the University of Bergen (Norway), Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (Singapore), the SinusTon Festival (Germany), the Bergen Center for Elektronisk Kunst (Norway), and dozens of Universities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Current projects include GRIDS for the [Switch~ Ensemble] as part of a two-year long residency at EMPAC, and a cello concerto for Mariel Roberts Musa and the TACETi Ensemble led by conductor Boon Hua Lien, premiering December 2025 in Bangkok at the IntAct Festival.
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