Dana Wilson

Dana Richard Wilson (born 1946) is an American composer, jazz pianist, and teacher. Wilson resides in Ithaca, New York. Wilson's music has been commissioned and performed by such ensembles as the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, Buffalo Philharmonic, Memphis Symphony, Washington military bands, Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Syracuse Symphony, the Hope College Wind Ensemble, and the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra. Wilson has written numerous solo works for such renowned musicians as hornist Gail Williams, clarinetist Larry Combs, trumpeter James Thompson, and oboist David Weiss. He received grants from, among others, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Arts Midwest, and Meet the Composer. His compositions have received several awards, including the International Trumpet Guild First Prize, the Sudler International Composition Prize, and the Ostwald Award, and can be heard on Klavier, Albany, Summit, Centaur, Innova, Meister Music, Elf, Open Loop, Mark, Redwood, Musical Heritage Society, and Kosei Recordings. Wilson was awarded the Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music in 1982, where he studied composition with Samuel Adler. While finishing his doctorate degree at Eastman, he wrote his thesis on "the role of texture in selected works of Toru Takemitsu". Wilson also holds degrees from the University of Connecticut (M.A.) and Bowdoin College (B.A.). Wilson is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Music at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches music composition. He is co-author of Contemporary Choral Arranging, published by Prentice Hall, and has written on diverse musical subjects, including his own compositional process in "A Composer's Insight, Vol. 4" and "Composers on Composing for Band, Vol. 2." He has been a Yaddo Fellow (at Yaddo, the artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York), a Wye Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a Charles A. Dana Fellow, and a Fellow at the Society for Humanities, Cornell University.