Alan Stout

American composer Alan Burrage Stout was born in Baltimore, Maryland on 26 November 1932. He studied at Johns Hopkins University and at the Peabody Conservatory. His teachers included Henry Cowell. He later studied in Denmark with Vagn Holmboe, and then at the University of Washington.

From 1962 he taught at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where his students included Augusta Read Thomas, Marilyn Shrude and Michael Pisaro.

Stout wrote in a modernist and experimental style, using elements of twelve-tone music, and his compositions have been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Stout once had quite a high profile on the Chicago music scene, but his music became unjustifyably neglected. He had wide-ranging musical interests, and colleagues referred to his intellectual and emotional generosity.

Alan Stout, who lived in Evanston, Illinois, died in Chicago on 1 February 2018, aged eighty-five.