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J. Anthony Allen, '01
J. Anthony Allen is an acoustic and electronic music composer and performer. He has held teaching appointments at the Peabody Conservatory of Music (at Johns Hopkins University), the University of Minnesota School of Music, the University of Minnesota Department of English, the Minnesota School of Business, and in the Netherlands, where he recently worked as visiting faculty at the University of Amsterdam.
He has worked with many forms of interactive media including audio, video, installation and dance, and performs extensively both as a guitarist and on wearable sensor controllers which he designed and built.
Allen's compositions have been performed throughout the U.S. and in countries including Denmark, France, Hungary, and the Czech Republic; and by such renowned groups as the Minnesota Orchestra, the Academy of Conductors Orchestra (Aspen), and the Peabody Conservatory Orchestra. Later this fall, the internationally acclaimed GVSU New Music Ensemble will be performing one of Allen's pieces commissioned exclusively for the group.
In 2004, Allen co-founded the Salon3136 Concert Series, which hosts concerts and other events with the intention of dismantling the exclusivity of concert music. Additionally, Allen has served as the director of programming and principal producer for the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts at the University of Minnesota for the last five years, on several committees at the American Composers Forum, and on the Technology Committee for the University of Minnesota School of Music. In 2008, Allen worked with Northern Lights on producing multiple events under the epithet "The Unconvention," which garnered national and international media attention.
Since earning a bachelor's degree in music from GVSU in 2001, Allen has earned four additional degrees. He graduated from the Peabody Conservatory of Music with double master's degrees in composition and electronic music. He recently finished his doctoral dissertation at the University of Minnesota earning an art minor along the way. He has also studied at the Centre de Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX) in Paris, France, as well as the Aspen Music Festival and School.
Allen currently resides in Minneapolis, MN.
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