Linda Dusman

Linda Dusman explores the territory between concert music and sonic art in her creative practice. She examines the natural world, current politics, and the human experience as a catalyst for constructing listening experiences that encourage a heightened awareness of the moment. Recent works include Terra Mycelia, composed for the Ruckus ensemble (to premiere in 2024) and Infinite Transformations, a bioart installation created collaboratively with Foad Hamidi, Alan Wonneberger, Lee Boot, and Ryan Zuber (premiered in 2023). Triptych of Gossips, a setting of Serena Hilsinger’s eponymous epic poem, has become a cornerstone of Duo della Luna’s repertoire, which in 2024 received the Miriam Gideon award from the International Alliance for Women in Music. Dusman’s solo CD Flashpoint was released by NEUMA Records in 2023 to critical acclaim.

Flashpoint for solo bass flute was commissioned by Lisa Cella for her Low Flutes Project and was premiered by her in 2023. Dancing Universe was commissioned by the Italian Trio des Alpes in 2019, and premiered in Genoa, Italy that year. Lake, Thunder was premiered at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in 2015. Her work for piccolo and alto flute An Unsubstantial Territory was recorded by the inHale Duo and has received many performances throughout the United States and Europe. Piano Interiors was Dusman’s response to the 2012 Cape Ann Museum’s Soliloquy in Dogtown exhibition of works by Marsden Hartley. Her works are published by I Resound Press and Neuma Publications, and are recorded on the NEUMA, Capstone, and New Albany labels.

As a sound artist, Dusman began experimenting with spatialized texts in the 1980s with a passage from Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans. Originally designed for quadraphonic tape, Becoming Becoming Gertrude explored the rhythms of Stein’s simple language in a dynamic evolution. Becoming Becoming Gertrude 2, available on Capstone Records, presents a stereo re-mix of the piece. Subsequent works include an interactive installation inspired by environmental decline using bird distress calls (and a voice was heard in Rama), and Mixed Messages, which uses telephone answering machine messages and an antique telephone switchboard as an interactive device. Mixed Messages was premiered at the University of New Mexico Museum of Art in 2005, and locations for other installations include the Pierogi 2000 gallery in New York, the alternative alternative exhibition on Wall Street, Dartmouth College, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Magnificat 4: Ida Ida was released on the Sounding Out! DVD in 5.1 surround by Everglade Records in 2010.

Dusman’s work has been awarded by the International Alliance for Women in Music, Meet the Composer, the Swiss Women's Music Forum, the American Composers Forum, the International Electroacoustic Music Festival of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Ucross Foundation, and the State of Maryland in 2004, 2006, and 2011 (in both the Music: Composition and the Visual Arts: Media categories). In 2009 she was honored as a Mid- Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellow for a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was invited to serve as composer in residence at the New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano in 2003. In the fall of 2006 Dr. Dusman was a Visiting Professor at the Conservatorio di musica “G. Nicolini” in Piacenza, Italy, and while there also lectured at the Conservatorio di musica “G. Verdi” in Milano. She recently received a Maryland Innovation Initiative grant for her development of Octava, a real-time program note system (octavaonline.com).

As a frequent contributor to the literature on contemporary music and performance, Dr. Dusman’s articles have appeared in the journals Link, Perspectives of New Music, and Interface, as well as a number of anthologies. She was a founding editor of the journal Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, and is as an associate editor for Perspectives of New Music. She is founding editor of I Resound Press, a digital archive for music by women composers (iresound.umbc.edu). Former holder of the Jeppeson Chair in Music at Clark University, the Liptiz Chairand the Bearman Family Chair in Entrepreneurship at UMBC, she is currently Professor of Music at UMBC in Baltimore.