Dosia McKay's composition portfolio includes scores for film, dance, and multimedia, works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choir, symphony orchestra, as well as synthesized sound. A versatile writer, Dosia fluently weaves elements of classical harmony, jazz, pop, avantgarde, baroque counterpoint, and folk melodies of her native Poland.
Recent projects include a soundtrack to Howard Libov's documentary “Burning Down the House” featuring a Massachusetts artist Paul Chojnowski, co-writing a score to a Catalan silent film depicting cultural life of the early XX c. Barcelona which was screened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in April 2010 as part of the Washington International Film Festival, a recording of a new work for jazz piano, soprano saxophone, and jazz chamber orchestra at the New York University, and a variety of scores to short films by the directors at the Tisch School of the Arts.
Her music has been featured at New York University, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the East Tennessee State University, King College in Bristol, TN, Southeastern Composers League's Forum at the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, College Music Society's Southern Chapter conference at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, GA, as well as in recitals in Knoxville, TN and in Spain.
She is a recipient of the University of Tennessee School of Music Scholarship and has been awarded the prestigious Presser Scholarship in 2008. She has been named the Top Graduate in Humanities, Top Collegiate Scholar of the College of Arts and Sciences, and an Outstanding Graduate of the University of Tennessee School of Music in 2009.
Her Danse Macabre for piano trio won the Southeastern Composers' League's Arnold Salop Memorial Composition Contest in 2007 and was a co-winner on the regional level of the Society of Composers Inc./ASCAP Student Composition Competition in 2007.
Dosia was born and raised in Poland. At the age of nine she began her music studies at the Elementary School of Music in Wejherowo concentrating on classical guitar, flute, and piano, and continued her education at the Conservatory of Music in Gdansk majoring in flute performance under Ewa Pinno and Katarzyna Wittschenbach.
In 1991 Dosia came to California to join the Celebrant Singers, a vocal ensemble accompanied by a big band, with whom she traveled extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, France, Italy, Malta, Greece, and Albania. She has also been a freelance artist concentrating on chamber, orchestral, and studio music.
Her composition teachers include Marc-Antonio Consoli, Ira Newborn, Rich Shemaria, Kenneth A. Jacobs, and James R. Carlson. She is currently studying scoring for film and multimedia at the New York University.
Dosia is also a visual artist and a poet. Her paintings are collected around the United States and in Europe and her poetry is featured on her blog Music Well.
