Conductor and guitarist Brian Edward Dowdy is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra, a LGBTQIA+ ensemble committed to performing works by composers from underrepresented populations. His prior conducting positions include the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra, Mississippi Valley Orchestra, Journey North Opera Company, and the University of Minnesota Campus Orchestra Program. In his current and recent directorships, he has increasingly focused on works by living composers and composers from underrepresented and marginalized populations, bringing new and rarely performed works to the stage. His recent programming includes music by Ulysses Kay, Alice Mary Smith, Florence Price, Emilie Mayer, Margaret Bonds, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Augusta Holmes, and world premieres by Sahba Aminikia,  Mary Kouyoumdjian, Andrew Yee, Nathan Hall, Yaz Lancaster, and Liza Sobel Crane.

With a particular interest in genre-defying works by 20th and 21st century music creators, Brian has performed new and contemporary works for the Switchboard Music Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, Old First Concerts, New Music Santa Cruz, Noe Valley Chamber Music, and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Guest Artist Series. In 2013, he conducted the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble in a night of 20 premiers inspired by Beck Hansen’s Song Reader. He has premiered numerous compositions for guitar and performed a wide variety of 20th and 21st century repertoire, and in 2009 he performed in the premier recording of Lou Harrison’s Elegy for Harpo Marx, alongside David Tanenbaum and Rodrigo Placencia.

In addition to symphonic works, Brian has recently conducted performances of Don Giovanni, Hänsel und Gretel, Susannah, Le tragédie de Carmen, The Rape of Lucretia, Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up, and Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters. His performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with Journey North Opera Company was named one of “The 10 concerts that shone brightest in 2019” by the Twin Cities’ Star Tribune. He has led choral and choral-orchestral performances with the University of Minnesota Campus Singers, Chorus Polaris, the Great River Chorale and the Sanctuary choir of St. Stephen’s Richmond, with whom he recorded Music for Compline, an album of plainchant and renaissance motets. He also produced and sang in Pesher Compline, performed inside James Turrell’s Sky Pesher, as part of the Walker Art Center’s 2014 Open Field.

Brian studied at Oberlin College, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the University of Minnesota. He holds degrees in conducting, classical guitar performance, English literature and East Asian Studies, for which he received two Newton Essay Prizes for explorations of the geopolitical roles of the Dalai Lama and the influence of D.T. Suzuki on Zen Buddhism in the United States. His principal musical mentors have included Mark Russell Smith, Erin Freeman, Kathy Saltzman Romey, Daniel Myssyk, David Tanenbaum and Stephen Aron. Brian currently resides with his wife and son in Minneapolis. When not making music, he can usually be found at the dojo practicing Aikido, the Japanese martial “art of peace,” or building, repairing and riding all manner of bicycles.