BIOGRAPHY
John Ashby is an American composer and musician born in 1951. He studied composition with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, and Elliott Carter, and was influenced by serial music and microtonal music. In 1977, he founded the New York Microtonal Music Ensemble, a avant-garde music ensemble that explored new chords and microtonal scales. Ashby has also composed electroacoustic and acousmatic music, and has been a pioneer in the use of computers in composition. His works have been performed by numerous ensembles and soloists, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Ensemble Contrechamps, the Ensemble Aleph, the Ensemble 2E2M, the Ensemble Court-Circuit, and the Arditti Quartet. Ashby has also been very active in the promotion of microtonal music, as founder and director of the New York Microtonal Music Center.