Robert Dow is a composer and researcher working primarily in electroacoustic music and sound art. His work explores the expressive potential of recorded sound — environmental, instrumental and vocal — and the ways in which these sounds carry memory, gesture and meaning when detached from their source. His music often draws on strongly referential materials, allowing familiar sonic fragments to appear in unfamiliar contexts where they can be heard differently.
He studied composition at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Birmingham, completing a PhD in electroacoustic composition. His research has focused on the aesthetics and practice of acousmatic music, including questions of sound diffusion, spatialisation and the role of recognisable sound in electroacoustic composition.
Dow worked for many years at the University of Edinburgh’s Reid School of Music, where he was a Senior Research Fellow and taught electroacoustic composition, music technology and sound recording. During this time he supervised composition and sound design projects and contributed to the development of creative music technology programmes.
His music has been performed in concerts and festivals in the UK and internationally, and he has worked with organisations including the BBC, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Paragon Ensemble.
Dow was also the director of Soundings, an international festival of electroacoustic music held in Edinburgh between 1999 and 2013, which presented work by composers from across Europe and North America alongside emerging artists and students.
Alongside his compositional work he has published on electroacoustic music and sound art, with research interests including sound theory, spatial listening, the relationship between sound and image, and the aesthetics of referential sound in acousmatic practice.