Henry Brant

Henry Brant is America’s foremost composer of acoustic spatial music. Brant’s mastery of spatial composing technique gives him access to textures of unprecedented polyphonic and/or polystylistic complexity.
Brant was born in Canada of American parents in 1913, Henry Brant began composing at the age of eight, and studied first at the McGill Conservatorium  and then in New York City.  Brant played violin, flute, tin whistle, piano, organ, and percussion at a professional level.  As a teenager, he was the youngest composer included in Henry Cowell's landmark book American Composers on American Music, demonstrating an early identification with the American experimental musical tradition. He composed, orchestrated, and conducted for radio, film, ballet, and jazz groups. The stylistic diversity of these professional experiences would also eventually contribute to stylistic polyphony of his mature works. Starting in the late 40s, he taught at Columbia University, the Juilliard School and, for 24 years, Bennington College.