John Pax Mulligan is a composer, sound artist, audio engineer, keyboardist, and educator who grew up on Whadjuk Noongar Country in Kalamunda, Western Australia, and now lives and works on the land of the Massachusett and Pawtucket peoples in Somerville, Massachusetts.

composer

I have written music for a wide range of forces with and without electronics, from instrumental solos and chamber music to large-ensemble and orchestral works, as well as sound installations and acousmatic works performed on concert loudspeaker systems.

My music is currently concerned with the expression of self and memory within a musical world; the relationship between a compositional structure and a physical performance space; and the ways landscapes accumulate and hold personal and collective histories.

technology and research

For over a decade, my compositional and technological research interests have been in conversation. My technical research has centered on spatial composition and sound projection, live electronics, higher-order ambisonic (HOA) and beamforming methods, as well as extended field recording practices and modular sound synthesis.

Recent projects have drawn these interests together – field recording, (recorded) instrumental performance, live-diffusion, spatial and HOA techniques – which allow me to move freely across actual and imagined spaces.

Through this decade of composition, performance, and research, I have developed numerous tools, methods, and electroacoustic workflows that continue to develop as the poetics of my compositional project grow and mutate.

Recent research projects of note include the reconstruction and performance of several electroacoustic works by Luigi Nono and, the development of a touring three-dimensional loudspeaker orchestra and spatial-audio performance system for a forthcoming production of Strauss’s Salome.

institution and community building

I am the founding Managing Director of the Shelemay Sound Lab in Harvard University’s Department of Music. Beginning with a small collection of field-recording equipment housed in a storage room, over four years, I developed the Lab into a university-wide hub for sound-based research, teaching, artistic production, performance, and critical listening.

The Lab now serves hundreds of students, faculty members, artists, and researchers each year. Over my four years as Managing Director, I have curated, produced, engineered, and taught a program of more than seventy workshops, performances, residencies, research projects, listening events, and guest lectures.

The Lab’s work across the wider Harvard campus has connected sound studies and practice-based artistic research with fields including architecture, landscape architecture, physics, engineering, theater, visual art, ornithology, neuroscience, anthropology, literature, and medicine –– whilst serving its core mission of edge-case ethnomusicological and electroacoustic research.

During this time, I oversaw the development of the Music Department’s spatial-audio, studio-recording, field-recording, and critical-listening facilities; managed major equipment and infrastructure projects; secured numerous donations of high-end audio equipment; and helped develop an inter-departmental spatial-audio collaboration supported by a significant grant from Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research.

teaching

I want my students to understand technology not as a collection of neutral tools, but as artistic material that must itself be questioned, misused, redesigned, and made expressively resonant, if they wish.

I have lectured or led workshops on composition, electroacoustic music, spatial audio, listening, sound production, and music theory at the university level. At Harvard, I have the privilege of mentoring dozens of students each year on their creative projects and technological interests through the Sound Lab. In spring 2027, I will teach my course Spatialising Sound.

In the past, I have lectured at the University of Western Australia on music and the moving image, and tutored in composition at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. My teaching at Harvard has been recognized with the Schafer Award for Teaching Excellence and four Harvard Distinction in Teaching awards from the BOK center for teaching and learning.

education

I hold a PhD and MA in Music Composition from Harvard University, where I studied with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku; a Bachelor of Music with first-class honours from the University of Melbourne, studying with Elliot Gyger; and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Music from the University of Western Australia where I studied orchestration and instrumental composition with Chris Tonkin and James Ledger.

keyboard

I am an avid keyboard player and active continuo player, currently performing with Charles River Baroque and the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra.

contact

johnpax73[at]gmail.com