Dr.John Howard was born in 1950 in Glasgow, and is active as a composer, music educator/musicologist, and conductor.  He read music at the University of Durham, and subsequently received his PhD there.  He studied composition with David Lumsdaine.

Music education publications include several articles for Music File, two books for Cambridge University Press, & two secondary school textbooks for Singapore (Exploring Music 1 & 2, Pansing Books).  His interest in Chinese music has produced a number of related papers, including Fusion or con-fusion, composing for Chinese orchestra, in the symposium of the ISME, 1992.  Recent work included a contribution to the symposium related to David Elliott’s work, to be published by OUP (New York), and a major review in the British Journal of Music Education 2001. 

His music has been widely commissioned, performed and broadcast internationally, and his output includes three works for the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra and one for the p’ip’a virtuoso, Wong Ching Ping.  He has been commissioned by Meriel Dickinson, the English Brass Ensemble, Bronwen Naish, Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band, Gemini, the Medici String Quartet, Ronald Lumsden, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and others.  His music has been performed in Australia, UK, Hong Kong, USA, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Zimbabwe, Israel, and Singapore, and by many distinguished performers including Peter Lawson, Richard Deering, Lontano, London Sinfonietta Voices, Electric Phoenix, Resonance, Inter-Artes, the London Collegiate Brass, Mary Weigold, and John Bingham.

Recent work includes There the Dance is, for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, two string quartets for the Medici Quartet, two choral works (Song for Cranleigh,

and The Splendour Falls); Concertino for Trumpet & Band and African Toccata, a solo piano piece for Julian Hellaby.