Robert Boury

As a professor of music and resident composer at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, he is an active musician and a devoted teacher, who hosts a "Songwriters Showcase" for his students each semester. Boury's commissioned work, To Dream Again, which contains four songs from Shakespeare's The Tempest, was given its first performance in the summer of 2003 at the 100th Anniversary Convention of Sigma Alpha Iota, in Dearborn, Michigan. In 2004, his university commissioned him to create a work in honor of the opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock and he continues to volunteer in schools and churches to share his music.

Boury joined University of Arkansas in 1981 as a resident composer and a professor of music theory and composition. He teaches courses such as; Analyses, Songwriting, as well as private sessions, which he enjoys. Boury also hosts a Songwriters Showcase for his students every semester. He believes that this event is a great opportunity for his students to present their works as composers. Students are asked to find other musicians to perform in the event rather than playing their own composition projects. When Boury was asked for the reason, he said that those students are all composers and should attend as a composer, not as a performer. Later when the author requested to know about his philosophy of teaching, Boury said, "A friend of mine challenged me to create a philosophy of Teaching in six words. Mine is, 'I'm a composer—so are you.'"

In 1977, Boury moved to Lansing, Michigan, after Lansing Community College invited him to create a new music program for an Associate degree. This new degree program consisted of Pop Rock Bands, Pop Rock Voice, Pop Rock Keyboard and Pop Rock Guitar, Business in Music along with Boury's courses, three levels of Pop Rock Theory and Songwriting courses. This new degree program attracted nationwide attention and enhanced enrollment at Lansing Community College. Boury mentioned that the experience at Lansing Community College changed his life tremendously as well as the career opportunity that led him to be at the current position at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

In 1964, Boury continued further music education at Manhattan School of Music where he studied with David Diamond in the junior level composition class. Boury still remembers what Diamond said in the class: "... you can write anything you want, so long as it's a fugue."

Robert Boury (born December 28, 1946) is an American composer and pianist. Boury was part of the revival of Ragtime led by William Albright and William Bolcom in the late sixties. Boury has composed many types of instrumental works and in a variety of medias and genres, such as solo/duet piano works, art songs, both comic opera/opera seria, choral works, ragtime works, orchestral works and elect acoustic pieces.

Robert Wade Boury was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1946. His father, Michael Boury, and uncles operated the Elby's restaurant chain, Michael managing the commissary, while Boury's mother, Pearl Mickey, was a stay at home mother. He describes his father as the master of "money and business" and narrates that his father was always bringing home new food recipes to try out on Boury, mother, and sister. He remembers his mother as "a good pianist with wonderful touch in her piano playing". However, she turned down a full scholarship to the Cincinnati Conservatory to get married. Even though she chose to be a wife and mother, she kept playing the piano for Boury and his sister every day. He describes her sound as follows: "My mother had the most beautiful touch of anyone I've ever heard up close. She only taught me by example. I've been trying to recreate it ever since."

David Diamond (born 1915 – died 2005) studied composition with Bernard Rogers and Roger Sessions. He met Maurice Ravel in 1928, and took Ravel's suggestion to study with Nadia Boulanger who taught Diamond counterpoint predominantly. In 1937, Diamond had an opportunity to receive tutorial instruction from Stravinsky in Paris. Diamond's works are characterized as a complex polyphonic approach with strong rhythmic pattern and seemingly innate formal logic. Boury followed Diamond's instructions during his study with him and wrote a song cycle which contains three movements in fugal style. Diamond believed that counterpoint study would make music pour out of his students after that work was done.

Born in Minnesota State, Ross Lee Finney (born on 1906 – died 1997) was another teacher who also influenced Boury while he was at the University of Michigan. Finney was exposed to piano and cello at young age, and by age twelve he was performing in small communities in the Midwest. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, Edward Burlingame Hill, Alban Berg and Roger Sessions. His style has a wide range from Romantic style, twelve tone, American/Midwestern roots to complex serial techniques. In the fall of 1968, Boury enrolled in the School of Music at the University of Michigan for his graduate degree. He mentions that he was influenced a great deal by just being around Finney and his Second Viennese School works. The inspiration led Boury to compose an orchestra piece "Summer Music 1968", which amazed his Music Theory teacher, Richmond Browne, who asked Boury how he could know so much about Vienna in 1935.