Alex Dowling
Hamlet 11.jpg

Opera/Theater

Original music and sound design for a production of Hamlet directed by Blanka Zizka at the Wilma Theater, Philadelphia. (March 25 - April 19 2015)

Her Name - a mini opera commissioned by Irish National Opera as part of the 20 Shots of Opera project (Dec 17 2020)

“Dowling’s score is sensitively wrought, catching the child’s desperate situation, the music mournful yet equally unsettling” (Opera Wire)

At a boarding school in Dublin City, a young boy secretly mourns the loss of his mother.

Music - Alex Dowling, Text - Mark O’Halloran, Boy soprano - Seán Hayden, Actor - Matthew Hayden, Director - Hugh O'Conor, Conductor - Elaine Kelly, Production Design - Sarah Bacon, Costume Design - Katie Davenport, Lighting Design - Paul Keogan, Series Director - Hugh O’Conor, Camera / Editor - Hugh Chaloner, Audio Production - Ergodos, Performed by RTÉ Concert Orchestra

Commissioned by Matthew Patrick Smyth for #20ShotsofOpera

In collaboration with RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Funded by Arts Council Ireland

Original music and sound design for Etel Adnan’s There: In the Light and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other, co-created by Blanka Zizka and Rosa Barba at the Wilma Theater for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (September 11-22 2019)

“The music is absolutely ravishing, thanks to composer/director Alex Dowling and singer-musicians Liz Filios, Brenson Thomas, and Emma O’Halloran” - John Timpane (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Photos by Johanna Austin

Music for the motion poem Upon reading that Andromeda will one day devour Triangulum and come for us next by Brian Spears (September 2019)

Upon reading that Andromeda will one day devour Triangulum and come for us next We know an end will come. This galaxy swings with inexorable force toward another and this world will not survive it. We may, people may, assuming we have made it out, one hundred thousand generations hence? What will survive of us today? Our art, we pray? Those poems scribbled out that woke us with a start? Those lightning flashes we were sure signaled inspiration? We must go, infect the universe with our stories, our beauty. We must take it with us. When that day comes, if we are still a people, will there be space for the merely beautiful, for impractical art? Let the end be swift, and we ignorant of it if we cannot carry it with us. Let us die thinking we could be immortal. Brian Spears “Upon reading that Andromeda will one day devour Triangulum and come for us next,” a poem by Brian Spears. ©2010 Brian Spears. Used by permission. Collected in A Witness In Exile (Louisiana Literature Press).

Original music and sound design for Hamlet, directed by Blanka Zizka at the Wilma Theater, Philadelphia (March 25 - April 19 2015)

Photos by Alexander Iziliaev

Original music and sound design for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, directed by Blanka Zizka at the Wilma Theater, Philadelphia (May 20 - June 14 2015)

Photos by Alexander Iziliaev