[photos by Leon Norting Har]
Austin Oting Har is a US-based composer, writer, performer, and new music advocate with a background in music technology and ancient philosophy. Described as “blinding, dazzling” (Sydney Arts Guide), “impossible to mistake for anything else” (JW Vibe) and “both intellectually challenging and emotionally moving” (Amplified Magazine), his works utilize ancient concepts, languages, and instruments, digital sound design and creative coding, bridging traditional Western and Eastern, experimental electronic, contemporary classical, and popular music worlds. His technology-mediated composition and performance practice explores timbral, microtonal, and rhythmic materials, focusing on the interplay between semantic, organic, and algorithmic processes. Phonaesthetics informs his creative writing and translation, where the sound of words is as important as their meaning. His collaborations extend globally, engaging with interaction designers, linguists, poets, and cultural bearers across Australia, Europe, the US Virgin Islands, the US, and Japan in his work intersecting Greek tragedy, Japanese noh theatre, and renga poetry with contemporary, intercultural music and literature.
An Associate Artist of the Australian Music Centre, the national organization representing Australian art music and sonic art, Austin’s music has been released internationally on Neuma Records (US) — including his debut opera The Ghost — Act I: Part I — and Possible Futures (Germany), commissioned by the activist opera company White Snake Projects (US) and festivals including Dark Mofo (Australia), Berlin Atonal and MaerzMusik (Germany), and Reverberator (US), published by BabelScores (France), and broadcast on modern classical and experimental electronic music programs in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. Awards include a Special Prize in the Ise-Shima International Composition Competition (Japan), the Carillon Society of Australia Composition Competition (Australia), the Create NSW Arts and Cultural Fund (NSW Government, Australia), and funded artist residencies at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (US) and Atlantic Center for the Arts (US). He has additionally been shortlisted in the top 15 for the IRCAM Artistic Research Residency and included in the best of 2024 list in Avant Music News (US). His research has been published in Context: Journal of Music Research (Melbourne University Press), Leonardo (MIT Press), and Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press), and is forthcoming in Resonance (University of California Press) and Principles of Music Composing (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre). He has been invited to present at diverse conferences including the International Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies (Poznań), Analytical Approaches to World Musics (Durham), Early Recording Associations Conference (Glasgow), the IAFOR International Conference on Arts & Humanities in Hawaii (Honolulu), Principles of Music Composing (Vilnius), TENOR International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation (Beijing), MACCM New Music Festival (Ohio), the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (Canberra), the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (Indiana), Australasian Computer Music Conference (Sydney/Melbourne), Audio Engineering Society convention (NYC), Classics and Ancient History Research Seminar Series (Sydney), and Creative Leadership for Innovation and Change Seminar Series (Virgin Islands). He has additionally been invited to talk at the Composer’s Colloquium (Berkeley) and Speculative Futures | APIDA Sounds and Stories (East Lansing). His poetry has been published in the English haiku journals Modern Haiku (US), Acorn (US), Presence (UK), seashores (Ireland), hedgerow (UK), and tsuri-dōrō (US), and the science fiction magazine Scifaikuest (US).
He earned his DMA in Composition and Music Technology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, MMus in Music Technology Innovation (summa cum laude) at Berklee College of Music, and MSc in Ancient Philosophy (with merit) at the University of Edinburgh. He received the Sydney Moss Scholarship via the University of Sydney and the Research Training Program stipend via the Australian Government. He first played violin in orchestras for musical theatre productions, then worked as a project coordinator and music engineer for commercial and film music in Hollywood. He has also worked as a senior high school English tutor in Sydney, an audio-visual technician in San Francisco, and a sound engineer for jazz and contemporary music concerts in the US Virgin Islands.
Austin is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Residential Community-Engaged Arts and Humanities (RCAH) in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Music at the University of the Virgin Islands and a Visiting Scholar-Composer at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an editor for the Sydney Undergraduate Journal of Musicology, which publishes research by the top honors students at Sydney, and has supported and developed initiatives for underserved youth in the US Virgin Islands and California. He is the founder and director of Bogue Street Records, an interdisciplinary label for artists.
(August 2026)
Press
… for those interested in contemporary opera’s outer boundaries, Har has created a remarkably bold work that transforms chaos, myth, philosophy, and sound into a singular artistic statement. Whether experienced as a waking nightmare, a ritual, or a journey of transformation, The Ghost is impossible to mistake for anything else… moments of haunting beauty emerge only to be swallowed by turbulence…
– JW Vibe
… there are a lot of layers to this, so there’s plenty to chew on, but [The Ghost — Act I: Part I] is a record you should listen to from start to finish, all in one shot… you are definitely in a bit of a trance listening to it. You find yourself swimming through… looking over your shoulder at the same time. He has such an amazing way of delivering pieces that have that intense feeling… it’s quite an unusual and breathtaking escape.
– Recording Artists Guild Digital Magazine
… more than just a musical release; it is an artistic manifesto that transcends the limits of human imagination. Har’s unique approach to music, philosophy and technology fuses into a masterpiece that is both intellectually challenging and emotionally moving. With this EP [The World Between Worlds / Ataraxia], Har has created a new dimension in neoclassical music and set a benchmark by which future releases must be measured.
– Amplified Magazine
… there’s an aspect about it that feels almost like it’s alive and breathing and when it’s over you feel as if you just watched an intense scene of a science fiction film… definitely outside the box… but it’s done with a sort of heart and soul that breeds the Fantastical and this is something that I adore about the track because the fence has to go part of it happens in your imagination while you’re listening to this. Check this record out with headphones so you can really just get sucked into everything and see how it affects you.
– Recording Artists Guild Digital Magazine
Media
Playlists
Airplay
| July 2026 | 24 Hours of Radio Art, CITR (Vancouver, Canada) 7/10 & 7/24 |
| June 2026 | Flappy’s Den, KXSF-LP 102.5 FM (San Francisco, USA) |
| June 2026 | Different Noises, Contrast and Flow (London, UK) |
| May 2024 | Melody in Mayhem, 103.3 Asheville FM (Asheville, USA) |
| May 2024 | The Atmospheric River, KFJC 89.7FM (Los Altos Hills, USA) |
| April 2024 | Mutable Carat, Contemporary Music Collective, 2MBS Fine Music (Sydney, Australia) |
| April 2024 | Not Brahms and Liszt, WMBR (Cambridge, USA) |
| April 2024 | Different Noises, Eternal Fusion (London, UK) |
| April 2024 | 24 Hours of Radio Art, CITR (Vancouver, Canada) 4/19 & 4/26 |
| May 2018 | Dark Mofo Festival, web commercial (Hobart, Australia) |