Editing Jack Body (section)

==Biography==
Jack Body was born 7 October 1944 in [[Te Aroha]], a town in the North Island farming district of the Waikato. Both parents came from farming families; his father, Stan, was an earthmoving contractor. Seeing his older sisters take piano lessons, Body convinced his parents to let him follow suit, and began piano lessons from William Cranna, a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and employee of the local power board. Body's first composing efforts as a child were re-composing his prescribed Royal Schools exercises and performing them at end-of-year piano recitals in the local church hall.<ref>"[http://www.jackbody.com/articles/talking_music.pdf Talking Music: Conversations with New Zealand Musicians] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304095124/http://www.jackbody.com/articles/talking_music.pdf |date=4 March 2016 }}", Sarah Shieff, Auckland University Press (2005).</ref>

Body attended secondary school as a boarder at King's College, Auckland. There, his interest in both music and painting was kindled amidst the school's dynamic musical life under the leadership of music teacher L C M Saunders, with whom Body took piano and organ lessons. On completing secondary school, he applied for the [[Elam School of Fine Arts]] but instead chose to study music at the University of Auckland, beginning a Bachelor of Music in 1963. At that time composition was not offered as a course of study at an undergraduate level; nevertheless, Body composed prolifically during his undergraduate years. While studying at the University of Auckland, Body also took organ lessons with Peter Godfrey and sang in the choir of [[St Mary's Cathedral, Auckland|St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral]], Parnell. In 1965 he was appointed organist and choirmaster of St. Aidan's Anglican Church in Remuera.<ref name="autogenerated2005">"Talking Music: Conversations with New Zealand Musicians", Sarah Shieff, Auckland University Press (2005).</ref>

After graduating his BMus with first class Honours, Body began his Masters of Music in 1966, studying composition with Ron Tremain in his first year and [[Robin Maconie]] in his second. He completed his MMus, along with an additional teaching degree, in 1967. As a postgraduate student, Body began corralling artists and musicians for events and projects. A considerable crowd of avant-garde Auckland artists gravitated around his Birdwood Crescent flat in Parnell. In 1967, while president of the New Zealand Chapter of ISCM (International Society for Contemporary Music), Body organised a festival called Aucklanders and the Arts in the University of Auckland Student Union Building.<ref name="autogenerated2005"/>

An Arts Council Grant in 1969 enabled Body to travel to Cologne to study at [[Mauricio Kagel]]'s Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. With an extension of the Arts Council Grant, Body was able to study at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, the Netherlands, from 1969 to 1970. Returning home in 1970 via travels through Greece, North India, and Jakarta sparked Body's lifelong fascination with non-Western musical traditions.<ref name="autogenerated2005"/>

On his return to New Zealand, Body took up a teaching position at Tawa College in [[Wellington]], but resigned after one year to focus on freelance composition projects. Body travelled to Bali and Java for four months in 1974, after which the Akademi Musik Indonesia in Yogyakarta (now in the Indonesian Arts Institute), invited him to return in 1976 as a guest lecturer. Body's return trip to Yogyakarta was supported by the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although Body was teaching Western music practice at the Akademi, his experience living in Yogyakarta enabled him to learn about the region's traditional music, as well as make numerous field recordings of local music and environmental sounds.

After a year in Yogyakarta, Body met linguist Yono Soekarno (or Sukarno) in an Indonesian post office and who was to be his partner for his remaining 40 years.<ref name="autogenerated2005"/> Body was gay; fellow composer Ross Harris said that Body "was a gay artist.... that was a basic position from which he did his work".<ref>{{cite news |title= Obituary: Inventive composer who always liked to provoke |newspaper=The Dominion Post |location= Wellington |page= C3 |date= 16 May 2015 }}</ref>

At the end of 1977, Body and Soekarno returned to Wellington, where Body worked as a freelance composer while tutoring at Victoria University and running workshops in secondary schools. 1980 saw the retirement of [[Douglas Lilburn]] as composition professor at Victoria University (now the [[New Zealand School of Music]]); Body applied for and was offered the position. Body remained on the composition faculty of Victoria University until his retirement in 2009.<ref name="sounz1"/>

Body lived out the rest of his life in Wellington, amidst countless travels overseas. His first trip to China was in 1985, whereupon he began formulating ideas for what would become his opera Alley, based on the life of [[Rewi Alley]], a New Zealand political activist in China.<ref name="autogenerated2005"/>

Celebratory concerts in honour of Body's 70th birthday were held at both the University of Auckland and Victoria University Wellington in April 2014. After a long battle with cancer, Body died 10 May 2015 in Mary Potter Hospice, Wellington, the day after his meditation on mortality "Cries: A Border Town" (originally entitled "Cries from the Border") received its Australian premiere at the 2015 Canberra International Music Festival. A memorial concert honouring his life was held at St. Andrews-on-the-Terrace, Wellington, on 24 May 2015.<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/68426767/arts-icon-jack-body-has-died | title="Arts icon" Jack Body has died | date=10 May 2015 | work=Dominion Post | access-date=10 May 2015 | first=Tom | last=Hunt }}</ref>