Robert Bowen
Dr. Robert Bowen is a Professor of Music at Mt. San Antonio College, where he teaches and manages
the music theory and musicianship course offerings. He is also a composer who specializes
in solo and chamber music for the guitar.
Robert's compositions have earned him awards from ASCAP, the Latin American Music
Center of Indiana University, and Metropolitan Theaters, including two Morton Gould
Young Composer Awards. These compositions have been performed in concert and in radio
broadcasts in California, the Midwest, throughout the Northeast and abroad by ensembles
such as the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet and the Relâche Ensemble of Philadelphia.
At Mt. SAC, Robert teaches and directs the department's "core sequence," a series
of five pairs of co-requisite courses designed to develop each student's skills, fluency,
and comprehension in the language of music. Robert maintains these courses, both to
insure C-ID compliance as well as to meet the changing needs of Mt. SAC's music students,
a mixture of aspiring performers, educators, composers, songwriters, music therapists,
producers, and audio engineers. For his efforts in theory and musicianship instruction,
Robert received the President's Award for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and
Learning.
Robert holds degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara (B.A., M.A)
and Princeton University (M.F.A., Ph.D.). He studied composition with Steven Mackey,
William Kraft, and Margaret Mayer; theory with Scott Burnham, Pieter van den Toorn,
and Lee Rothfarb; and piano improvisation with Larry Karush and Rick Helzer. His dissertation
explores narrative implications of large-scale repetition and recurrence. He is a
member of ASCAP and the MACCC.
