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about
Jacob Kingsbury Downs is currently Research Associate on Professor Nicola Dibben's QR-Policy project "Ethics and IP in AI Music Generation" at the University of Sheffield.
He is also currently a supervisor on the MA Music Psychology in Education, Performance and Wellbeing (Distance Learning) at the University of Sheffield. He has tutored and supervised students at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, as well as at the Purcell School.
As well as academic pursuits, Jacob is an accomplished musician, with proficiency as a singer, pianist, viola player, and harpist.
He is also an experienced composer, arranger, engraver, copyist, and score consultant.
BIOGRAPHY
Jacob was born in December 1993 near to the Devon coastline in south-west England. He began formal musical training at the age of ten, though the thrill of scales and technical exercises never quite outweighed that of writing new music for the army of instruments he collected over his teenage years.
At the age of eighteen, Jacob signed his first independent record deal, releasing two singles and an EP over a five-year period, all of which he wrote, arranged, and produced alongside undertaking undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Universities of Oxford and Sheffield.
Jacob has worked closely with a range of composers and musicians on scoring projects, acting as a scoring consultant, arranger, and engraver in various capacities. He has also toured nationally as a session musician and performed on a wide range of musical releases. You can find more information here.
After stints in Oxford, Cambridge, London, Brussels, and Manchester, he now lives in Deal on the Kent coast.
"Kingsbury" is Jacob's middle name, his grandmother's maiden name.
education
ph.d. MUsic
university of sheffield
m.st. MUsic (musicology)
St john's college,
university of oxford
B.A. MUsic
christ church,
university of oxford
2012–2015
First
Recipient of Clifford Smith Prize
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