Austin, Larry, 1930-2018

Larry Don Austin was born on September 12, 1930 in Duncan, Oklahoma. By the time of the 1940 U.S. Census, his family had relocated to Vernon, Texas. Austin earned a bachelor's degree in music education and a master's degree in music from what is now the University of North Texas, studying with Violet Archer (University of North Texas). He later studied with French composer Darius Milhaud (Mills College), and American composer Andrew Imbrie (University of California-Berkeley), collaborating in California in the 1960s with composers John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and David Tudor. Austin also co-founded the groundbreaking journal of new and experimental music, Source: Music of the Avant Garde, whose archives also reside in the Music Library. He was a member of the UNT College of Music faculty from 1978 until 1996, and served as director of the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia from 1983 to 1991, and in 1995 and 1996. In 2009, he received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). His works have been performed nationally and internationally by ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic and the National Philharmonic of Warsaw, and he remained active as a composer well after his retirement from UNT. Larry Austin died in Denton, Texas on December 30, 2018.