Child grew up in East Anglia, England, and began his musical studies with the violin and piano. He took his first composition lessons from the English composer Bernard Barrell at age 12—an early exposure with a lifelong influence, not the least of which is Child’s abiding interest in writing music for children. In 1973 he transferred from Keele University, England, to Reed College, Oregon, through an exchange scholarship, and he graduated from Reed with a BA in music in 1975. After studying Karnatic music in Madras (modern Chennai) on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, he entered the graduate program at Brandeis University and earned his PhD in musical composition in 1981. His later teachers include William Albright, Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, Jacob Druckman (Tanglewood), and Seymour Shifrin.
In 1986 Child joined the music faculty at MIT as an assistant professor, where he taught music theory, composition, and analysis; he is presently Class of 1949 Professor of Music Emeritus and a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT. During his time at MIT Child composed for many of the prominent musical ensembles in the Boston area—among them the Boston Chamber Music Society, BMOP, Boston Musical Viva, Cantata Singers, Collage New Music, Emmanuel Music, Lydian Quartet, and the New England Conservatory Contemporary Ensemble—and he has been awarded three Artists Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, most recently in 2015.
A few themes occasionally surface in his pieces, such as concern with humanitarian crises in his Cantata Singers works Estrella (1988) and Lamentations (2017), or musical responses to personal milestones such as Elegy, with rabbit (2016), written in memory of his father. A comprehensive range of musical vocabulary is another important feature, exemplified in his song cycle for soprano and piano, A Golden Apple: Six Songs of Intimacy and Loss (2023). Recent work also includes Child’s collaborations with his wife, the Norwegian artist Lina Viste Grønli, including music commissioned for the 2021 Bergen International. Other collaborations with Grønli, often with the composer performing, include Performa 13 (New York), Gallerie Gaudel de Stampa (Paris), CCA Andratx (Majorca), MABA (Nogent-sur-Marne), Kunsthall Stavanger, Entreé (Bergen), and the List Visual Arts Center at MIT. Current projects in 2026 include a new work commissioned by Collage New Music to celebrate György Kurtág’s 100th birthday, featuring the instrumentation of Kurtág’s iconic Scenes from a Novel: soprano, cimbalom, violin, and double bass. Also coming up: the premiere performances of The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (2025) with the Chamber Music Ensemble of Minnesota and the All Newton Music School, Massachusetts.
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