Alex Dowling is a GRAMMY-nominated Irish composer and producer whose work spans from acoustic ensembles to live electronics and opera.
His upcoming album Breathers is a breathwork meditation album for string quartet. Written for members of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, it uses the contours of the music to guide listeners through a range of breathwork techniques that each have a different effect on the mind and body. His previous album for Auto-Tune choir, Reality Rounds, was released on Carrier Records and is described as “an enthralling trance of live-processed vocals and synthesizers" (The Road to Sound).
Recent opera projects include a commission from Irish National Opera to create a work for boy soprano as part of their 20 Shots of Opera project. Dowling created the electronic music for the opera double-bill TRADE/Mary Motorhead by Emma O’Halloran that was showcased at the PROTOTYPE 2023 festival in New York, LA Opera REDCAT, toured multiple venues in Ireland, and had its Australian premiere in Melbourne in 2026. The album of these operas was released on Signum records in 2025 and, for his work as producer, he received a nomination in the Best Opera Recording category at the 68th GRAMMY awards.
Dowling’s music has been performed by ensembles internationally including the Irish National Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Prism Saxophone Quartet, orkest de ereprijs, and Mivos String Quartet, and has been featured at festivals including Bang on a Can and the Young Composers Meeting, Netherlands. He has written music for theatre and laptop orchestra, and his audiovisual installation Bodysnatcher was exhibited at the Eyebeam Gallery, NY and toured many other countries.
Dowling was named a MacDowell Fellow and an artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. He studied composition as a PhD fellow at Princeton University.