John Celona

Biography

John Celona, born in San Francisco, studied music composition at San Francisco State (B.Mus., M.A.), University of Pittsburgh (Mellon Doctoral Fellow), Indiana University and University of California, San Diego (Ph.D.) where he was affiliated with the Center for Music Experiment.  His teachers include Henry Onderdonk, Iannis Xenakis and Kenneth Gaburo. He also played tenor saxophone on the SF jazz scene, created his own quartet while sessioning with such artists as Carlos Santana, Sun Ra and Coltrane's bassist Raphael Garrett.   As an experimental music director,  he founded the new music ensemble, the 'Networks Orchestra'.  In 1977, he came to the University of Victoria where he teaches composition, conducts new music, pursues research in music-compositional software and, from 2000-2008, he was Associate Dean.  His compositions project timbral and spatial music for acoustic ensembles and real-time computer music performance.  John is also the inventor and designer of TimbreSpace, a real-time music composition, orchestration, analysis and performance Macintosh software application.  This work has been supported by two successive Canada Council Media Arts Creative Development Grants.  

Research Interest

Composition, Computer Music, Music Theory