John Young

Composer, senior lecturer

John Young was born in Christchurch (New Zealand) in 1962. He studied at the University of Canterbury, completing a doctorate on the manipulation of environmental sound sources in electroacoustic music. In 1989, with the assistance of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, he travelled to the UK to further his studies of electroacoustic music composition working privately in the studios of the University of East Anglia with Denis Smalley. He returned to New Zealand in 1990 to take up a position at Victoria University of Wellington where he became a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios. In November 2000 he became a Senior Lecturer with the Music Technology Innovation and Research Group at De Montfort University in Leicester (UK).
His main interest in composition continues to be in acousmatic music, particularly forms based on the interplay between recognizable natural sound sources and computer-based studio transformations.

He was first prize winner in the 1996 Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (for his work Inner), and has received mentions in the Prix Ars Electronica, Bourges, Noroit-Léonce Petitot and Valencia Arts XXI competitions.
He has been a visiting composer at San Jose State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), the Groupe de recherches musicales (Paris, France), the iM-PACT Center of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (USA) and, with the assistance of the Swedish Institute, at EMS (Stockholm, Sweden).

Participation during Resonances 2003 :