Douglas Knehans is an American-Australian composer, born 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri. He completed degrees in flute performance and composition at the Australian National University before gaining a Masters Degree from Queens College, CUNY where he studied with Thea Musgrave. He earned his doctorate in music composition from Yale University where he worked with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Jacob Druckman. Knehans has been a professor of music at the University of Alabama; director and head of school at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music and dean and Thomas James Kelly Professor of Music at the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Cincinnati, OH. He is currently on the composition faculty at CCM where he serves as the Norman Dinerstein Professor of Composition Scholar.
In 2008 Knehans and his partner, designer Josephine McLachlan, co-created ABLAZE Records and have since published over seventy discs of new music from hundreds of living composers around the world. Knehans has served as producer for ABLAZE Records and has produced over seventy discs and is a member of NARAS. His own compositions have also been published by ABLAZE and his discs have won numerous international recording awards.