Body, Jack (actually, John Stanley)

Body, Jack (actually, John Stanley), New Zealand composer, ethnomusicologist, teacher, and experimental photographer; b. Te Aroha, Oct. 7, 1944. He studied with Ronald Tremain and Robin Maconie at the Univ. of Auckland (B.M., 1966; M.M., 1967), at Lilburn’s electronic music studio in Wellington, in Cologne (1968), and with Koenig at the Inst. of Sonology in Utrecht (1969). After serving as a guest lecturer at the Akademie Musik Indonesia in Yogyakarta (1976–77), he became a lecturer at the Victoria Univ. of Wellington School of Music in 1980. Body is an active champion of New Zealand musical life through his editorship of the Waiteata Music Press, which publishes scores by New Zealand composers, and as a producer of CDs of New Zealand music. As a composer, he has ranged widely over genres, from the use of traditional instruments to electroacoustic means. He has been notably influenced by the music of Southeast Asia and East Asia, most especially of Indonesia, and has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for synthesizing non–Western musical materials with contemporary compositional techniques. In his experimental photography, he has explored relationships between sound and image.