William Dougherty, assistant professor of composition at the University of Washington, presents When the Ocean Sets the Terms: On Listening and Making “of ice and oceans” in this installment of the 2025-26 THEME lecture Series.
Abstract
This talk focuses on my recent work of ice and oceans (2024) for large ensemble and fixed media, developed in close engagement with underwater recordings by Jana Winderen. Made in the Barents Sea and along the Russian-Norwegian border, these recordings carry the sounds of marine life, shifting ice, and the steady presence of industrial activity.
In this work, the recorded material shapes how the music unfolds. It influences pacing, density, and form. At moments the musicians move alongside the recordings; at others they press into them or are absorbed within them. The piece develops as a slowly evolving sound mass in which distinctions between sources begin to loosen.
This process has pushed me to rethink authorship and control. If the structure of a piece can emerge from environmental sound, the composer’s role becomes less about imposing form and more about negotiating with what is already there. This raises questions that resonate with recent work that challenges human-centered models of listening and creativity. Thinkers such as Timothy Morton and Donna Haraway have argued for ways of understanding the world as entangled, distributed, and resistant to clean boundaries; this piece takes up those ideas in a compositional setting.
At the same time, there is a tension that the work can not resolve. Presenting these recordings in a concert hall draws attention to fragile environments, but it can also detach them from the conditions that give them meaning. of ice and oceans stays with that friction, holding open the question of how—and whether—we can listen to these sounds without fully absorbing them into our own ways of hearing.
Biography
William Dougherty is an American composer, sound artist, educator, and writer who joined the University of Washington faculty in January 2025. Dougherty's works have been performed internationally by ensembles including BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Glasgow), The Sun Ra Arkestra (Philadelphia), Yarn/Wire (New York), Ensemble Phoenix (Basel), TILT Brass (New York), Ensemble for New Music Tallinn(Estonia), JACK Quartet (New York), and Talea Ensemble (New York). His music has been featured in festivals such as Tectonics Glasgow (2023), IRCAM's ManiFeste (2019), musikprotokoll (2018), Donaueschingen Musiktage (2017), New Music Miami (2017), Tectonics Festival New York (2015), the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2015), the 47th Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (2014), the New York Philharmonic Biennale (2014), and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Dougherty was the recipient of the Luciano Berio Rome Prize in Music Composition from the American Academy in Rome. He hasreceived additional recognitions, awards, and fellowships from Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Columbia University's Institute for Ideas & Imagination, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM/ISCM), the Aaron Copland House, SEAMUS/ASCAP, BMI, PARMA Recordings, the PRS for Music Society, the American Composers Forum, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, the Institute for European Studies, and the UK Foreign Aid and Commonwealth Office.
Dougherty earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) degree at Columbia University in New York City, where he taught and assisted undergraduate courses in composition, music technology, and music theory at Columbia University. He previously served on the composition faculty at Temple University.
Dougherty graduated with a Bachelor’s in Music Composition from Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance in Philadelphia where he studied with Maurice Wright, Richard Brodhead, and Jan Krzywicki. As a Marshall Scholar, Dougherty earned his Master’s from the Royal College of Music in London studying with Kenneth Hesketh and Mark-Anthony Turnage after which he completed supplementary studies (Ergänzungsstudium) under the guidance of Georg Friedrich Haas at the Hochschule für Musik Basel in Switzerland. In 2018-19, William completed the Cursus Programme in composition and computer music at IRCAM in Paris while in residence at Cité Internationale des Arts.
Series Background
THEME: A colloquium of UW faculty and students of Theory, History, Ethnomusicology, and Music Education held on select Friday afternoons during the academic year.