Liam Dougherty

Liam Dougherty (b. 1996) is an Irish-American composer whose work in contemporary music coincides with his conceptual interests in visual art and the materiality of sound. Liam conceives of his compositions as musical sculptures in which various kinds of sounds, textures, and techniques occupy a sonic space, shifting the listener’s attention to the act of listening itself. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 2019 where he studied history of art and visual culture in addition to music with a focus in composition. His scholarship in both fields fostered a compositional practice rooted in material approaches to experiments in sound. Liam lives in London where he is pursuing a Master’s in Composition at the Royal College of Music where he studies with Jonathan Cole as a Johnson Scholar. His upcoming projects include a chamber opera about the life of painter Richard Gerstl and a multimedia sound installation for piano wire.