John Hodian's Biography
John Hodian is a composer, conductor, and pianist whose music is deeply influenced by his Armenian roots. John's work is a natural expression of his interest in Armenian folk, classical and spiritual music, along with his formal study of European classical music, world music, and a wide variety of improvised music including jazz, classical avant-garde, folk, and rock.
Hodian received his Master's degrees in composition and conducting at The Philadelphia College for the Performing Arts. John also spent several summers at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where he studied piano and improvisation with Art Land and Ralph Towner as well as literature and poetry with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.
While teaching composition and music theory at the University of the Arts, John was conductor of the Philadelphia New Music Ensemble and associate conductor of The Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. His music has been heard in numerous feature films, dance pieces, chamber music ensembles, stage dramas, music-theater pieces, and over 300 documentaries. John's music-theater piece, "Sweet Theresienstadt," produced by En Garde Arts and Theater Archa, played for a year in Prague before touring to Warsaw and Berlin. In addition to being selected as resident composer for the Sundance Theater Institute, John has collaborated with leading theater figures such as Anne Bogart and Israel Horovitz, and he was a two-time winner of the New Dramatist Frederick Lowe award for music theater.
For the last 15 years, John's focus has been on creating music for The Naghash Ensemble.
