Ned McGowan- February 23-27, 2026

Ned will give a workshop on rhythm on Thursday, February 26 during the 1:00 hour, available to the full student body. He will also give a performance of his original compositions that evening at 7:30pm. During the week of his residency, he will work individually and in small groups with students covering topics of performance, composition, and entrepreneurship.

Ned McGowan (1970) is a American-Dutch composer, flutist, researcher and teacher, living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Known for rhythmical vitality and technical virtuosity, his music has won awards and been performed at Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw and Purcell Room and other halls and festivals around the world by many orchestras, ensembles and soloists. As a flutist he plays classical, contemporary and improvisation concerts internationally and he has a special love for the contrabass flute.

His works include Concerto for iPad & Orchestra (2012) which has been performed in the Netherlands, the United States and Brazil, Workshop (2004) for recorder and tape, six pièces mécaniques (2012), written for Calefax & Eric Vloemans, Cleveland Times (2016), commissioned for the NFA Flute Convention, Bantammer Swing (2008), a concerto for contrabass flute and orchestra, which premiered in Carnegie Hall by the American Composers Orchestra, Garden of Iniquitous Creatures (2016), for the Grammy Award winning sextet Eighth Blackbird, and the recent Concerto for Indian Percussion, for BC Manjunath.

Ned teaches composition, Advanced Rhythm and Pulse, and is Head of Artistic Research at the Utrecht Conservatory. He is currently finishing a PhD at the Leiden University and the DocARTES program in Ghent. He holds degrees in composition from the Royal Conservatory The Hague and in flute from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2014, he was awarded the Alumni Achievement Award from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is the founder and director of the International Rhythm Course, a series of course in Utrecht and India dedicated to learning, exploring and performing rhythm.