André Bon was born in Lille in 1946. He studied music at the Conservatoire National Superieur in Paris. There Olivier Messiaen was his professor of composition and he also worked with the Group of Musical Research of Radio-France directed by Pierre Schaeffer. Both were essential to his development. When he graduated from the Conservatory he won the famous Prix de Rome and spent two years at the Villa Medecis in Italy.

          Since then his activities have included both creative composing and teaching. He has received many prizes and fellowships among which are: the Lili Boulanger Prize in 1975, the Hervé Dugardin Prize given by the SACEM (the French Authors and Musicians Society) in 1979, a sabbatical fellowship for creative work granted by the Ministry of Culture in 1982, the SACEM’s Composers Prize in 1992, the Monbinne Prize of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1995.

          His lyric works have also received awards: the Award for the Best French Creation granted by the French society of drama & music critics in 1987 and the New Talents Award of the French authors’ society, the SACD, in 1988 for his opera The Rape of Persephone. He was awarded the prize for the Best French Musical Production by the SACEM in 1993 for his cantata The Valleys of the Cinema, the Samuel Rousseau Prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1993 and the Wolf-Ebermann Prize of the International Theatre Institute in Munich for his opera Girl with a Book in 1996, the Prix Musique 2009 by the SACD for his opera Iq & Ox in 2009.

         André Bon’s catalogue contains some sixty works in a style well-defined by the alliance of his taste for broad masses of sound and his sense of melody.

         Involved in many activities within the field of contemporary French music, Bon has taught Twentieth Century Musicology at the University of Aix-en-Provence. He has been granted the status of composer in residence several times, at the Atlantic Art Center in Florida and at the Henry Clews Foundation in La Napoule.

         In 1999 he obtained the Kyoto Award within the AFAA program of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and spent six months in residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Japan. Upon his return he was appointed professor of composition at the American Conservatory of Fontainebleau.