Larry Austin

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Larry Austin (born September 12, 1930 in Duncan , Oklahoma , † December 30, 2018 ) was 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 faculty member at the University of California, Davis from 1958 to 1972 . There he founded the magazine Source: Music of the Avantgarde in 1966 , of which he is the editor. From 1972 to 1978 he taught at the University of South Florida and from 1978 to 1996 at the University of North Texas . He founded the computer music studios at both universities. 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 at Centaur Records). From 1990 to 1994 he was President of the International Computer Music Association . In 1998 he received a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center .

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

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

In 1994 he completed the Universe Symphony by Charles Ives , which was first performed by the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra under Gerhard Samuel. It was performed again by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra at the Warsaw Autumn 1995 and recorded on CD in 1998 by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra .

Further recordings are u. a. with the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra .

Awards

literature

  • Thomas Clark: Larry Austin. In: Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. August 21, 2012.
  • Thomas Clark: Larry Austin: Life and Work of an Experimental Composer. Raleigh, NC: Borik Press, 2012.

Web links