Ned’s compositions are informed by his experiences as a flutist in European contemporary, improvisational and non-western musical circles and his main artistic goal is to create self-contained musical worlds through a process of cross-genre translation. By utilizing the possibilities of notation and a variety of performance practice approaches, he seeks to create practical methods to universal, cultural and personal expressions.
“McGowan’s music strives for an idiom in which various musics – American popular, European classical and avant-garde, Carnatic, a fascination with proportionally intricate rhythms, the use of microtones in the search for new subtleties of melody – and many others, rub against each other and generate new meanings.” (Bob Gilmore)
Orchestras who have performed his works include American Composers Orchestra, Valdosta Symphony Orchestra (USA), Orquestra do Teatro Nacional Claudio Santoro (Brazil) and the Dutch orchestras Radio Kamer Filharmonie, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Gelders Orkest, Rotterdam Sinfonia and Ricciotti. Reed quintets include Calefax, Splinter Reeds and Akropolis, and ensembles include Eighth Blackbird, Aleph, Array Music, Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, Duo Blow, Calefax, David Kweksilber Big Band, Flexible Music, Great Noise, Hexnut, Insomnio, Klang, MMM…, musikFabrik, Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, Nederlands Fluit Orkest, BlowUp Flute Octet, Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Post & Mulder Piano Duo, Rubiks, Sax & Stix, Spinifex, Ensemble Scala, Trio Scordatura, Ensemble Verge, Wervelwind, Zapp4 String Quartet, Zephyr String Quartet and soloists including Susanna Borsch, Helen Bledsoe, Keiko Shichijo, Guy Livingston, Tatiana Koleva/Rutger Oterloo, Kimberly Sparr, Greg Oakes, Reiko Manabe, Mysore Manjunath, Derek Bermel, Sarah Jeffrey, Egbert Jan Louwerse and Eric Vloeimans.
Ned’s piece Tools, winner of the Henriette Bosmans Prize (NL), was described as “brutal and humorous” (Geneco), while at the same time “packed with discreet acoustic rooms, some more resonant than others, but all proving that… subtlety pays off” (Guy Livingston, Paris Transatlantic). His work “Wood Burn grew to be the highpoint of the evening” (Mark van de Voort, the Brabants Dagblad). Hans van Lissum (www.cut-up.com) wrote, “the compositions of band leader Ned McGowan, very complex in many ways, are especially well put together. Live performance also allows them to breathe enough, by optimally taking advantage of theatrical aspects….”
Many of his works utilize unusual instrumentations, extended techniques or theatrical setups. For Tempest in a Teapot, commissioned by the Dutch Music Days for the Radio Kamer Philharmonic, the orchestra is spatialized around the public, which also participates in creating sounds. As winner of the Harvey Gaul competition from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, he composed Sound becomes visible in the form of radiance, which is built around the bowing of a piano: “a radical work that reorients the listener’s relationship to time.” (Mark Kanny, Pittsburgh Tribune) His recent set of six pièces mécaniques for Calefax and Eric Vloeimans is mostly comprised of text directions and staging diagrams. Also McGowan composed the worlds first Concerto for iPad (tablet computer) and orchestra, which saw it’s premiere with soloist Keiko Shichijo and the Rotterdam Sinfonia, conducted by Conrad van Alphen.