John B Hedges was born in 1974 in Wilmington, Delaware. The son of a rock musician, he began studying classical music at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.A. in Music in 1994 and his M.M. from Westminster Choir College in 1997 He then completed post-graduate studies at the Curtis Institute of Music where he studied with Richard Danielpour and Ned Rorem. In his summers, John B attended the Aspen Music Festival where he studied with John Harbison and George Tsontakis and attended the Contemporary Composition and Performance course at the Britten-Pears School (as both composer and conductor.) John B subsequently returned to the U.K. to apprentice with Oliver Knussen. In addition, he has participated in the Academie Musicale de Villecroze in France, in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Composition and Conducting Institute and assisted composer Tan Dun on the Metropolitan Opera premiere of The First Emperor.
John B Hedges’ music has been performed throughout the U.S. as well as Canada, France and England. As a composer and conductor he has worked with the Ensemble Modern, New Jersey Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, Curtis Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Ensembles the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble among others. He has also conducted concerts at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Frankfurt Alte Oper, Academie Musicale de Villecroze, the Aldeburgh Festival. Recently, John B completed A Shipwreck Opera in One Act in collaboration with fiction writer Aimee Bender, On the Good Foot:a James Brown tribute piece for the Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, and a sonatina for clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester. In January of 2008, the Grand Rapids Symphony premiered Prayers of Rain and Wind with contrabass soloist Joseph Conyers for whom it was written. John B has also served as orchestral arranger for the eclectic string trio Time for Three and was recently named the Fort Worth Symphony’s composer in residence for the 2011-2012 season.
John B has received the Alfred Casselo Award, the Theodore Presser Career Grant and a 2006 Independence Foundation Fellowship. He has also received grants and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer and multiple residencies at the artists colony, Yaddo. John B is currently on faculty at SUNY New Paltz.
