Teaching

Theory
Instrumentation
Composition

Research Interests

Composition, sound art, feminist theory, interdisciplinary arts

Education

B. Mus. American University (1978)
M.A. University of Maryland, College Park (1981)
D.M.A. University of Maryland, College Park (1988)

Bio

Linda Dusman’s compositions provide stimulating and thought-provoking listening experiences for audiences throughout the world. Her work has been awarded by the State of Maryland in 2004 and 2006 (in both the Music: Composition and the Visual Arts: Media categories), Meet the Composer, the Swiss Women's Music Forum, the American Composers Forum, the International Electroacoustic Music Festival of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the Ucross Foundation, among others.  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 she 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. In 2009 she was honored as a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellow for a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Linda Dusman returned to the theater in her 2007 collaboration with actress Wendy Salkind on a sonic environment for a performance of Gertrude Stein’s novel Ida. Her duo for piccolo and alto flute entitled An Unsubstantial Territory for the inHale duo premiered in 2008, and the New Music Ensemble at Towson will premiered her piano trio Diverging Flints in 2009. Earlier composition projects include a work for violinist Airi Yoshioka entitled magnificat 3: lament, for solo violin and electronics, involving collaboration with interactive animator Alan Price, and magnificat 2: still for the Tanosaki/Richards Duo.  O Star Spangled Stripes was premiered by the Hoffmann/Goldstein Duo in 2005. Her works are published by Silent Editions, 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 2 live performers and 2 voices on quadraphonic tape, Becoming Becoming Gertrude explored the rhythms of Stein’s simple language in a dynamic evolution across time and space. Becoming Becoming Gertrude 2, available on Capstone Records, presents a stereo re-mix of the piece. Subsequent works include Time and Time Again (using newspaper texts), an interactive installation inspired by environmental decline using bird distress calls and calls of extinct birds (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 will be released in 5.1 surround by the Everglades label in 2009.

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. Her bi-weekly blog appears on the New Music Box, sponsored by the American Music Center. Former holder of the Jeppeson Chair in Music at Clark University, she is currently Professor of Music at UMBC, where she served as department chair from 2000-08.