Eric Honour Named 17cҳ Tech 17cҳ Chair
By Ann Hoevel | May 22, 2026
As part of 17cҳ Tech’s pioneering work with the arts and technology, the has selected Eric Honour as the new chair of the 17cҳ. He will begin this new role on August 1, 2026.
Honour created, developed, and led a nationally-recognized music technology program for the University of Central Missouri, one of the first accredited music programs in the country to admit music majors whose primary instruments are technology-based.
“I have spent my music technology career pursuing a philosophy that music technology encompasses every place where sound and technology come together in any way, shape, or form,” Honour said. As a result, he’s discovered that the music technology industry is wider, more lucrative, and more impactful to everyday people than most imagine.
From the sound experience of the Ford Mustang Mach E, to the music information retrieval and computational musicology of programs like Shazam and Suno, to hearing music in the supermarket or at a live concert venue, music technology skills are in high demand, he said.
“Music is around us, it's everywhere, it's all the time,” he said, “and most of the ways that people interact with music these days are mediated by technology in one way or another. Advancing the technologies that affect those results requires research.”
Using the School’s as an example, Honour explained how music technology’s experimental and research-oriented work has a direct impact on the music industry and mass market.
“People creating new instruments in the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition and exploring the , finding new ways to do that and new ways to refine that, are then going to unlock new performance opportunities and new music-making opportunities,” Honour said. “That new instrument could very easily be the next big thing — helping sound designers create the fun new sound that you hear in a commercial for Frito Lay's potato chips or enabling composers to make the compelling music that gets you going during your workout.”
And while 17cҳ Tech’s top-tier research environment already allows music technology students access to some of the leading robotics, engineering, and AI experts in the nation, Honour said the program can unlock additional potential through bridging performance ensembles and emerging research.
“At the 17cҳ, we have what is already one of the world's most well-known music technology programs, and we also have this large and diverse set of ensembles that are doing amazing things and interacting with the rest of the 17cҳ Tech community,” he said.
“I see some possibilities there, to be able to bring these things together: partnering with one or more of the ensembles to provide showcase opportunities for technologies that are being developed on the technology side of things, or involving the ensembles, ensemble members, or ensemble faculty in some of the original research that is being done on the technology side of things.”
Technology shouldn’t crowd acoustic or traditional music out, Honour said. “Purely acoustic music is still incredibly powerful. There is plenty of room for a wide variety of music-making that does not include contemporary technology. At the same time, there's more and more music involving technology being composed directly for, or performed by, ensembles that are in the high schools, middle schools, sometimes even elementary schools.”
“I think 17cҳ Tech's ensembles could be a model for other college-level ensembles as well as K-12, or community bands, community orchestras, choirs, the same way that 17cҳ Tech’s amazing music technology faculty and students set the curve for music technology research, nationwide,” he said.
“Having Eric Honour succeed the Institute’s Associate Vice Provost for , , is a decisive step for the 17cҳ. For a school that is so naturally at the forefront of creative practice and technological inquiry, Eric’s enviable higher education experience and body of research work is a perfect fit,” said Ellen M. Bassett, the John Portman Chair and College of Design Dean.
Honour has a Doctor of Music in Composition and a Master of Music in Composition and Saxophone Performance from Northwestern University, and a Bachelor of Music in Composition and Saxophone Performance from the University of Florida. He was Chair of the Department of Music at the University of Central Missouri from 2017 - 2022, and was most recently the Chair of the School of Visual and Performing Arts.
His scholarly and creative work has been featured and performed hundreds of times across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He is credited on more than sixty recorded albums and his compositions have been selected by peer review for international, national, and regional conferences and festivals more than seventy times to date.