Drawing from a seemingly bottomless pool of wide-ranging styles and influences, Doug Opel creates a strange and wonderfully eclectic sort of musical stew for the concert stage that is at once dark and humorous, controlled and chaotic, reflective and passionate, traditional and contemporary.

Opel's music has been performed around the world by such notable organizations and artists as New York City's 60x60, Keys to the Future and MATA Festival, upstate New York's Vision of Sound, Chicago's Pianoforte Salon Series, the ensemble Intersection at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis, the Duquesne Contemporary Ensemble, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Aldeburgh Festival at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Music Studies in Aldeburgh/Snape, Suffolk, England and the Scotia Festival of Music in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Radio appearances include broadcasts by the CBC, WKCR's "Afternoon New Music" in New York City, WCNY's "Fresh Ink" in Syracuse, on WMBC's "art@radio" in Baltimore, WFMT/Chicago and on WRTI's "Now is the Time" in Philadelphia.

His work has been commissioned by MATA, the Fort Wayne Alumni Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota, and bass-baritone Timothy Jones. Additionally, Opel's most recent work, "3 preludes to missing the point" (underwritten by the American Composers Forum with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation) can be found on the Innova label as part of "Melville's Dozen", a larger collection of piano works commissioned and performed by pianist Nicola Melville.

In 2003, he became one of seven composers to receive the Aaron Copland Award, a residency that allows composers to work uninterrupted and in privacy at Copland House - the last home of Aaron Copland located in the Peekskills of New York. He was recently selected as the 2009 C3 (Composer Commission Competition) winner, awarded by The Definiens Project. The resulting piece for chamber ensemble will be premiered in 2010. He is also currently honoring a commission from pianist Robert Satterlee.

Opel holds a B.S. in music education from Ball State University (1990), an M.M. in composition from the University of Michigan (1993) and a D.M. in composition from Indiana University (2002). He has studied piano with Pia Sebastiani and Dickran Atamian. His primary composition mentors were Ernesto Pellegrini, David Foley, Kamran Ince, George B. Wilson, William Albright, Don Freund, Jeff Hass, Eugene O'Brien and Claude Baker. He has also studied with U.K. composers Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews.