Larry Austin

Larry Austin (born 1930, died December 30, 2018) was an American composer from Oklahoma City, emeritus professor of music at the University of North Texas. He studied with Canadian composer Violet Archer at UNT and French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College, following by graduate studies under American composer Andrew Imbrie at the University of California, Berkeley in 1955–58. Austin learned electronic music at the San Francisco Tape Music Center (1965–66) and computer music at Stanford University (1969), and was closely associated with composers John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and David Tudor in California. Prominent both in traditional and experimental genres, Austin's works had been performed and recorded by The New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and other major American and European ensembles. Since 1964, he wrote over 70 electroacoustic and computer music works: solo tape compositions, various combinations of instruments, voices, orchestra, video, live-electronics and real-time audio processing. Some of the notable performances include the 1994 premiere of Austin's complete realization of Universe Symphony (1911-51) by Charles Ives, performed and recorded by the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Gerhard Samuel. More performances followed by The National Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra at the Warsaw Autumn Festival (1995) and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken (1998) in Germany. Austin has received numerous commissions, grants, and awards, including the Prix Magisterium (1996) in the 23rd Concours International de Musique Électroacoustique in Bourges, France for his BluesAx (1995-96) for sax and electronics, as well as over three decades of influential leadership in electroacoustic music. From 1958 to 1972, Austin was a faculty composer at the University Of California, Davis, where he also acted as New Music Ensemble conductor and co-founded, edited, and published a seminal journal, SOURCE: Music of the Avant-Garde, in 1966–71. Larry Austin continued his teaching career at the University Of South Florida, where he established and directed SYCOM: Systems Complex for the Studio and Performing Arts until 1978. After learning computer music at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the summer of 1978, Austin joined the faculty at the University of North Texas. He oversaw the transition from hybrid analog/digital systems to software synthesis on UNIX-based workstations at the Center for Experimental Music & Intermedia (CEMI) and became co-director of the Center with Phil Winsor in 1983. Subsequently, Larry Austin served as CEMI director in 1990–91 and 1995–96. In 1986, the composer founded a Consortium to Distribute Computer Music and served as CDCM president until 2000. The organization produced over 30 compact disc releases in CDCM Computer Music Series on Centaur Records. On the last photo: Larry Austin posing with Phil Winsor (in the back) and Synclavier for the promotional CEMI photo-shoot in the 1980s