Biography
Biographer Thomas Clark writes: Larry Austin has produced cutting-edge musical works in a broad spectrum of genres, mediums, and styles: avant-garde, improvisation, orchestral, electronic, computer, fractal and other algorithmic composition, and historical “re-composition”. His music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, National Symphony, Cincinnati Philharmonia, Saarland Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester, and National Philharmonic of Warsaw, and has been heard in Asia, Europe, the U.K., and throughout North and South America.
Austin's 38-year academic career included UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, University of South Florida, and University of North Texas (retired 1996), teaching subjects including marching band, composition, and advanced computer-music research. A sought-after mentor, his former students include many successful composers. He founded the Consortium to Distribute Computer Music and co-founded SOURCE magazine, UNT Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia, and System Complex for Studio and Performing Arts at USF. He also served as President of the International Computer Music Association and directed its standard-setting 1981 International Computer Music Conference. Prizes and honors include the Bourges Magistère prize (1996), the 2009 SEAMUS Award for Lifetime Achievement, many residencies (in Rome, Bellagio, Birmingham and York in the UK, Tokyo, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo), and numerous commissions. Born 1930 in Duncan, Oklahoma, Austin grew up a precocious trumpet player in Vernon, Texas. At North Texas State Teachers College (now UNT), he played in the original One O’clock Lab Band, studied with John Haynie, Robert Ottman, and composer Violet Archer, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He later studied with Darius Milhaud and Andrew Imbrie in California and began an extended association and friendship with John Cage. He served in the Fourth U.S. Army Band based in San Antonio, where he met and married Edna Navarro in 1953. Their large extended family includes children Don, Elizabeth, David, Thais, and Aurora as well as thirteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.