Biography
Composer Rick Sowash creates a wide range of pieces grounded in tonal language. Beyond his creative work, he has earned recognition throughout his home state of Ohio for his roles as author, publisher, filmmaker, radio host, arts organizer, innkeeper, church musician, performer of tales, and public servant.
Born Richard Sowash in Mansfield, Ohio, during January 1950, he has spent nearly all his life within the state’s borders. His father operated a print shop while both parents pursued music; his sibling Bradley maintains an active career as a jazz performer in the Columbus region. Piano study led Sowash toward composition after he attended a Mansfield performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, given by cellist Leonard Rose. Although high-school instructors nurtured his inventive impulses, university training proved discouraging because of its rigid focus on avant-garde styles. He completed degrees in music and comparative literature in 1973 yet declines to identify the institution. Returning to Ohio, Sowash obtained a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from Capital University near Columbus in 1989 and a master’s degree in vocal pedagogy from Ohio State University in 1991. Throughout the 1990s he taught voice or lectured at various institutions in Ohio and Michigan.
He eventually established residence in the Ohio towns of Belleville and Gambier, where he and his wife restored a historic property and ran it as a bed-and-breakfast, before settling permanently in Cincinnati. There he has produced numerous compositions for the Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church Choir. Sowash has written several books and gained statewide notice for storytelling programs that have reached roughly 750,000 schoolchildren. Listeners have heard him as an announcer on WOSU-FM at Ohio State, and he has held elected office in Richland Township. Amid these pursuits he kept composing, though music publishers and the wider establishment showed scant interest. He did, however, draw the attention of several ensembles that commissioned numerous scores, among them the U.S.-based Mirecourt Trio, the Nice, France-based trio Les Gavottes, and the Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church Choir. Although his reputation remains strongest inside Ohio, performances have reached distant venues such as St. Petersburg, Russia, and Cincinnati’s classical station WGUC-FM regularly airs his music.
Recordings issued under his own name include Sanctuary at 3am (2005), Eroica (2006), and Rick Sowash: American Perennials (2011). By the mid-2020s more than twenty of his works had been captured on disc, among them three clarinet trios featured on the Upland Trio’s 2024 release Voyageurs: Three Trios for clarinet, cello, and piano by Rick Sowash.
Born Richard Sowash in Mansfield, Ohio, during January 1950, he has spent nearly all his life within the state’s borders. His father operated a print shop while both parents pursued music; his sibling Bradley maintains an active career as a jazz performer in the Columbus region. Piano study led Sowash toward composition after he attended a Mansfield performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, given by cellist Leonard Rose. Although high-school instructors nurtured his inventive impulses, university training proved discouraging because of its rigid focus on avant-garde styles. He completed degrees in music and comparative literature in 1973 yet declines to identify the institution. Returning to Ohio, Sowash obtained a bachelor’s degree in vocal performance from Capital University near Columbus in 1989 and a master’s degree in vocal pedagogy from Ohio State University in 1991. Throughout the 1990s he taught voice or lectured at various institutions in Ohio and Michigan.
He eventually established residence in the Ohio towns of Belleville and Gambier, where he and his wife restored a historic property and ran it as a bed-and-breakfast, before settling permanently in Cincinnati. There he has produced numerous compositions for the Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church Choir. Sowash has written several books and gained statewide notice for storytelling programs that have reached roughly 750,000 schoolchildren. Listeners have heard him as an announcer on WOSU-FM at Ohio State, and he has held elected office in Richland Township. Amid these pursuits he kept composing, though music publishers and the wider establishment showed scant interest. He did, however, draw the attention of several ensembles that commissioned numerous scores, among them the U.S.-based Mirecourt Trio, the Nice, France-based trio Les Gavottes, and the Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church Choir. Although his reputation remains strongest inside Ohio, performances have reached distant venues such as St. Petersburg, Russia, and Cincinnati’s classical station WGUC-FM regularly airs his music.
Recordings issued under his own name include Sanctuary at 3am (2005), Eroica (2006), and Rick Sowash: American Perennials (2011). By the mid-2020s more than twenty of his works had been captured on disc, among them three clarinet trios featured on the Upland Trio’s 2024 release Voyageurs: Three Trios for clarinet, cello, and piano by Rick Sowash.
Albums
