Ralph Dudgeon
Ralph Dudgeon is a versatile musician/scholar who is known for historically informed performance on period instruments as well as his performances of contemporary repertoire. Dudgeon received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, San Diego. He earned a Master of Arts degree in trumpet performance and a Bachelor of Arts in music education from San Diego State University.
Dudgeon has appeared throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, and Mexico as a trumpet soloist and conductor. His debut solo album, Music for Keyed Bugle, was the first full-length recording devoted to the keyed bugle. He has recorded for Musical Heritage Society, Music Masters, Newport Classic, Nimbus, Hyperion, Innova, and Spring Tree labels. He is a Professor of Music at State University of New York, College at Cortland where he teaches music history and trumpet. He is also the trumpet mentor at Colgate University. For two months a year, he is a research consultant for Instrumentenmuseum, Schloß Kremsegg in Kremsmünster, Upper Austria and performs annually in Europe. Dudgeon has contributed articles to the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (6th and 7th editions), the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, the American Musical Instrument Society Journal, the International Trumpet Guild Journal, Ovation, and the Historic Brass Society Journal. Dudgeon contributed two chapters to the Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments. His 1993 book, The Keyed Bugle (Scarecrow Press), is considered the definitive research on that instrument. The second, expanded edition of The Keyed Bugle was released in November of 2004. Dudgeon's Das Flügelhorn, was published by PPVMEDIEN GmbH in German and English in December 2003. The work is a brief history of the flugelhorn and features over a hundred color photos of instruments housed in the Instrumentenmuseum, Schloß Kremsegg (Upper Austria) as examples of change in the instrument's technology over the past three hundred years.
E-mail: dudgeonr@cortland.edu