Owen Underhill

Composer and conductor Owen Underhill is Artistic Director of the Turning Point Ensemble and a past faculty member in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University from 1981 to 2022, where he served as Director and as Dean pro Tem of the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology.  From 1987 to 2000, he was Artistic Director of Vancouver New Music.  As a conductor, Underhill has conducted more that 300 premieres of Canadian and international composers. As a composer, his music has been described as dense and interesting, colourful, lyrical in inspiration, exuberant and witty, subtle, and thoughtful. He has won several awards as a composer including the Outstanding Classical Composition at the Western Canadian Music Awards in 2007, and the First Prize in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Canadian Composers Competition in 1994.  Underhill received a Lifetime Achievement Award for extraordinary contributions to Canadian Music in 2017.