Larry Austin

Larry Austin ( born September 12, 1930 in Duncan, Oklahoma) is an American composer, conductor and musicologist.

Life

Austin studied composition with Violet Archer ( University of North Texas), Darius Milhaud ( Mills College ) and Andrew Imbrie ( University of California, Berkeley ).

He was a member from 1958 to 1972 to the faculty of the University of California, Davis. There, founded in 1966 the journal Source: Music of the Avant-garde, whose editor he is. From 1972 to 1978 he taught at the University of South Florida from 1978 to 1996 at the University of North Texas. At both universities, he founded the computer music studios. His students include James Phelps, Beth Anderson, Lucio Edilberto Cuellar, Gary Knudson, Michael Matthews, Dary John Mizelle and Rodney Waschka II

From 1986 to 2000 he was president of the Consortium to Distribute Computer Music (producer of the Computer Music Series on Centaur Records). From 1990 to 1994 he was president of the International Computer Music Association. In 1998 he was awarded a residency at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Austin has written more than 80 compositions, including electro-acoustic music and computer music.

He wrote the piece Improvisations For Orchestra and Jazz Soloists, in 1964 brought Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic and soloists such as Barre Phillips to the performance. In 1963, the Austin New Music Ensemble at the University of California, Davis, who was as improvisation group for new music until 1968. During this time he frequently exchanged ideas with John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and David Tudor.

In 1994 he completed the Universe Symphony of Charles Ives which was uraifgeführt from Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra under Gerhard Samuel. It was re-listed at the Warsaw Autumn 1995 by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and recorded by the Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken on CD in 1998.

Other recordings are, inter alia, with before the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Awards

• Bourges Magisterium (1996 )